How the Majority of State Flags in the United States Violate the Most Basic Rules of Design

Linus Obenhaus of Linopa Films took a humorous look at the basic design rules that make a state flag most appealing. These rules include the use of meaningful symbolism, color simplicity, distinctiveness and disallows letter or seals. Using toothpick flags, Obenhaus pointed out the best state flag designs, those being Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Alaska and Ohio. The rest of the state flags Obenhaus just considers them to be “seal and bedsheet”.

The best US state flags all stand out as unique and distinctive. The seal and a bedsheet flags aren’t distinctive or related none of them really stand out, but they don’t really fit well together either. They’re all a slightly different blue or an entirely different color and they’ll have different sized seals and you can’t tell them apart. It just doesn’t work.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.