Our State Flag is one big nothingburger. It's right up there with the State Quarter - a design rerouted by our governor from a far more compelling voyageur theme to a standard issue cow/milk/cheese/silo scene. It was easily the most underwhelming quarter in the 50 state collection. Had it not been for a minting error that made some of the early issue coins collectible, it would have deservedly vanished from memory long ago. It does, however, bring to mind some of problems that our flag has...
1 - It's not an original design. It follows the Maine, Delaware, New Hampshire, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Nebraska, Utah mold. The Wisconsin flag is too much like other flags, so much so that in 1979... "Wisconsin lawmakers found that their flag was difficult to distinguish from others. To remedy this, the words "Wisconsin" and "1848" were added to the flag". . This addition, or patch job, or whatever you want to call it increased our flag's lameness factor by 100.
2 - The flag's centerpiece depiction of miner,a great lakes sailor and a badge of industry is too small - there's too much information in that small space to make any kind of impression. A good flag is simple,bold and makes an immediate impact upon the viewer - just think of England and Japan...those are flags!
3 - Texas has a cool flag, Arizona has a cool flag, Hawaii has a cool flag...I'm sick of other states having the cool flag. On the bright side, Colorado has the ugliest flag I've ever seen.
4 - Our flag is so lame that most out of state people consider this to be our state flag....
I've written nearly 400 posts on the out of proportion number of extraordinary, world changing ideas and people who, for better or worse - but always with major impact - have come from Wisconsin. I would like to think that such a profound impact could be represented in a boldly designed flag. Is that too much to ask? One more thing.... at it's best, this state doesn't follow, it leads. Always. Forward.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
We Need A New Flag
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11 comments:
Right on.
Our flag is a mess. In light of the quarter situation changing the flag is next to impossible.
How about the WI State Tartan as the background/body of the flag? I couldn't find a pic of it though. "Forward" at top or bottom and whatever icon at the center, if any.
Our basic license plate is real stinker also. Dump the tagline and imagery along the top and replace it with the simple Forward motto.
Yellow, black, green and blue wide horizontal stripes (one each). No words, no animals.
George Hess.
This jogged my memory of an article I read somewhere about five years ago that rated the flags of the countries of the world by design and recognizability. The jist of the article was, the simpler the flag design, the more recognizable it was.
How about a Wisconsinology "Design a New State Flag" contest........couldnt we submit jpegs or simply descriptions of flags like george did and have you render them/post them and finally pick one? maybe even combining best points of a couple of entries into one final brilliant flag........with either you being sole judge or a viewer-vote thing.......then we forward it to doyle or simply christen it the Wisconsinology State Flag.
btw....America's Dairyland must remain on license plates.
Phew!.. that license plate logo is a stinker. If they wish to keep a farm theme, I'd rather see, "Come smell our dairy air!"
I couldn't agree more! I actually remember some article in the Madison paper a few years ago where the citizens were polled and the results said the majority of Wisconsin residents liked the flag. I want to know just where exactly that poll was taken and if the people they asked even KNOW what the state flag looks like.
Look at the madison city flag... This is what the state flag should be like... a couple of colors, simple and to the point!
http://fotw.vexillum.com/images/u/us-wi-ma.gif
I know this is long after the date of this post, but I just found the site. The simple answer would be to make the background of the flag Badger red, or cardinal if you're being official, and leave the rest the same. Only Arkansas and Tennessee have mostly red flags and those designs are distinctively different from Wisconsin's.
I completely agree. I know I'm really late with this post also, but I've always felt strongly about this. I'm stationed in Germany and everyone has a flag hanging in their room from their state, mostly Texas (of course), South Carolina, Tennessee, etc.. so I got a Wisconsin flag to hang in my room because I'm proud to be from Wisconsin and our flag's embarrassing. It's boring and it's just our state seal on a blue sheet. Having to actually put the state name on the flag makes it worse. Our flag needs to be bold and unique, something a 3rd grader could make out of construction paper, I don't think I could even make this one. We need a new flag that represents our heritage, is distinguishable, and something that a child could draw and hang proudly on the fridge. I think something close to the German or Bavarian flags would be ideal, since we have such a proud German heritage (might boost our slumping beer industry and promote tourism too) States are all starting to be the same, Wisconsin needs to stand out!
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