New Flag for Nebraska

Back in 2001, the North American Vexillological Association conducted a survey (which I have mentioned on this blog in the past) in which they endeavored to rate the flags of the states, provinces, and territories of the USA and Canada.  New Mexico, Texas, Quebec, Maryland, and Alaska made up the top five best designs, while this week's flag, Nebraska's, came in at number 71, second to last:

"If that flag is second to last, which flag was the worst?" I can hear you asking.  Well, the survey was conducted in 2001 and at that time, Georgia was in the middle of a flag transition and had a odd combination of state seal and all the state's previous flags in one design (see my post New Flag for Georgia for more info).  Since then Georgia's flag as changed and while it still isn't in the top 10 or 20, it is definitely better than last place.  The only conclusion I can draw is that Nebraska now holds the secure spot as being the worst flag in the USA and Canada.

I suppose I should tread lightly in regards to Nebraska's flag, for in doing research for this post I found the official information on the flag provided by the government of the state.  On Nebraska's Secretary of State page, it said "State law says no part of the state flag is to be used as a business advertisement or trademark, and insulting the flag is forbidden."  I have no intentions of trademarking this design, but it is possible I'll be insulting it as we go.

This flag is awful and the vexillology survey got it right. It seems like Nebraska was trying to follow the rule of having few, contrasting colors, but ignored the idea of keeping the imagery simple and concise.  The end result of course is the mess seen above. 

Honestly, I don't see anything worth keeping in this flag.  Even the imagery used in the seal, ignoring how fussy and confusing it is, could be representative of almost anywhere (generic mountains, a river, fields, etc.).  In the end I decided to maintain the shades of blue and the yellow used in the seal and discarding everything else.  I used the natural monument Chimney Rock as the basis for a new design as it is unique to the state and served as an important landmark for several of the trails used by American settlers to travel west, primarily to Oregon, California, and Utah.  Here is what I came up with:

Chimney Rock is balanced by a Zia sun symbol (also used on the New Mexico flag and seen on my proposal for a new Wisconsin flag) in the upper right in a design reminiscent of what was used on Nebraska's state quarter back in 2006:

If I had any artistic ability, I would have tried to include the image of the covered wagon, but I'll leave that to people who are using something more precise than MS Paint.

A quick note on the Zia sun symbol.  The Zia tribe is located in New Mexico, but that symbol has been found on flags in Wisconsin and Kansas, so I thought Nebraska (conveniently located between Wisconsin and Kansas) could use it as well.

New Flag for North Dakota

Let's hope my attempt at a new North Dakotan flag turns out better than the one I did for South Dakota.  Here's what we have to work with:

This is yet another example of a seal and blue flag, but at least this one has a neat eagle.  The eagle is way too detailed, the plus side being that it isn't surrounded by superfluous stuff like most state seals.  For the Louisiana flag, which also prominently features a large bird, my main change was to simplify the creature to make it less fussy.  I considered doing that with this flag, but didn't want to repeat myself.

My next idea was a wood chipper on a white and red background, but I doubt North Dakota wants that to be the new symbol of the state.  Plus, it would be too regional, and I want to represent more than just Fargo.

North Dakota doesn't have much flag history.  The current design was adopted in 1911 and was based on a regimental banner carried by North Dakotan soldiers in the Spanish-American War.  The only change they made when it was officially adopted was the addition of the banner along the bottom.  In recent months, there was an attempt to change the flag to a much simpler design, but I've been unable to find that news story again.  If I remember correctly, it was a single large star in yellow and blue, but I may not have that right.  I know it didn't get through the legislature though.  (It might have been South Dakota actually, which would be embarrassing for me)
EDIT: The proposal I was thinking of was South Dakota, thanks Leonardo, and my bad.

At any rate, I wouldn't want to use that design anyway, as I do try to be original in my suggestions.  They aren't always good, but I try not to (overtly) copy others.  In that spirit, I decided to take my inspiration from a flag that I'm sure few outside of North Dakota would recognize (and probably not too many inside if we're being honest), the standard of the Governor of North Dakota:

This flag, even with all the tiny details, is better than North Dakota's current flag.  Green is not a common background color in the US, which I think is a shame, but this flag makes good use of it.  The text will have to go, as will the bow and arrows at the top, but in the end I didn't make as many changes as you might expect:

I've altered the dimensions of the flag, making it less long and narrow, and removed the detail I mentioned above.  I also rotated the arrowhead, so that it is now pointing north, for obvious reasons.  North Dakota has a much better connection to its Native American heritage than many other states and the use of the arrowhead reflects that. 

As for the four stars, I decided to justify them as representing the four corners of the state.  I was initially pleased because I thought North Dakota was the 40th state and that only having four stars could represent that as well, but when I double-checked my dates, I found it was the 39th, so no help there.  I do not know what they stood for on the original governor's flag, but they seem to show up on many governors' flag across the country, so maybe they don't belong here at all.  Regardless, I decided to keep them, mostly because I thought it looked  little boring with just the arrowhead.

New Flag for Nevada

Nevada, home of deserts, Las Vegas, and Area 51 (which probably doesn't have aliens, my sole reason being that if the government can't cover up a break in at a hotel, I doubt they could hid a spaceship for this long).  The flag for this state should be interesting and dynamic, but sadly, this is not the case:

Nevada's flag is blue.  There is a little seal in the corner to keep it from being a blue version of Libya's old flag, but it still isn't very interesting.  I like the phrase "Battle Born" (used because Nevada became a state during the Civil War), but that doesn't mean it belongs on the flag.  This flag was also designed in a contest, and unlike Alaska, this contest didn't turn out so well.  Luckily, Nevada had another flag back at the beginning of the 20th century, so let's take a look:

I like this flag better than the current one, but we would need to do something about the text.  Even though the key feature of this flag is words, I toyed with the idea of leaving it as is.  It makes a very simple statement "We are Nevada. We have silver and gold.  That is all."  It was referring to the rich mineral wealth of the state, but it could be interpreted today to be a reference to casinos as well.  Eventually, I decided to use the flag as a template and this is the result:

Using the color scheme the flag already had, I turned the word "Silver" into a silver stripe, the word "Gold" into a gold stripe, and removed the word "Nevada" completely.  I re-centered the stars, and as there are 36 and Nevada was the 36th state, I didn't think any further changes were necessary.

New Flag for Connecticut

This week we'll look at the flag of Connecticut:

Yet another seal-on-blue with text and lots of fussy details.  The blue is a lighter shade than most (at least in this version, I have also seen it with a darker shade), but otherwise is virtually indistinguishable from others.  The grapevines are meant to represent either the first towns of Connecticut Colony or the three colonies that began in the area that is now Connecticut (Saybrook, New Haven, and Connecticut).  I toyed with the idea of enlarging the grapevines and re-centering them on just a blue background, but I wasn't able to simplify them to my satisfaction.  When I tried to remove the detail but retain the basic shape, I just ended up with a purple and brown design that looked more like a "$" than anything.

The words and seal would have to be removed, of course, and following my experiments with the grapevines, I decided to get rid of them too.  Luckily for me, Connecticut has another popular symbol, the charter oak.  Back in the 1680's, James II tried to consolidate his North American colonies to make them easier to manage and thus ordered that the colonies of New England (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) be combined into a Dominion of New England.  This was not a popular idea as each of the colonies valued their individuality, and when the new royal governor came to collect Connecticut's original royal charter to symbolically destroy it, it was hidden from him in the trunk of a large oak tree, which came to be known as the charter oak.  The dominion was so unpopular, it only lasted three years.  The tree stood well into the 19th century and was even used on the back of Connecticut's state quarter in 1999.

If I were a better artist, or perhaps more skilled with Microsoft Paint, I would have created a better charter oak image for the flag, something along the lines of the palmetto that South Carolina uses.  Since I can't though, I just took the tree image from the flag of Oakland, California, figuring that a city called OAK-land would probably use an oak.  And besides, few people can tell deciduous trees apart in real life, let alone when they're only stylized representations on a flag.  I also added a yellow border to make the background more interesting. 

In the end though, I couldn't decide between a green tree or a yellow one.  I'm leaning toward the yellow, but only because it keeps the flag to two colors.  I'll leave it to others to choose between them:

 
The yellow used is the same shade that is present in the current flag, the green though is darker than the current grapevine leaves.  I found the lighter green was not well defined on the blue background.

New Flag for Wisconsin

Wisconsin's flag, ugh:

I don't have any criticism for this flag that I haven't used for all the other seal and blue flags.  There is just too much going on, not to mention the huge "WISCONSIN" and "1848."

When I usually try to fix a flag like this, and I don't have any brilliant ideas, I turn to the city flags in that state.  Some American cities have truly amazing flags.  There are a lot of seal on random-background-color ones as well, but maybe because fewer people have a hand in the design (must be easier to get a flag idea through a city council than through a state legislature) or because there are so many city flags it is statistically more likely that some of them will be good, there are some great designs out there.  For Wisconsin, I started by checking out the flag of the largest city, Milwaukee:

Hmm, perhaps I spoke too soon.  It certainly is more interesting than the state flag, but it is just as busy, if not more so.  The yellow on blue looks good, sort of reminds me of the flag of Kazakhstan.  The next largest city in Wisconsin is Madison, the state capital, and a place that has better flag sense than it's larger counterpart:

I'm not exactly sure why they're using the same Native American sun symbol that New Mexico uses on it's flag, but it looks really good.  To make it appeal to all of Wisconsin, I just made a slight tweak:

I flipped the orientation, mostly just for the heck of it, and I changed the lower triangle to green.  But I didn't use just any green, I chose the exact shade used by the Green Bay Packers.  If there is a team that epitomizes it's state better than the Packers, I'd be surprised (maybe the Red Sox).  This provides a fifth color to the flag (blue, yellow, white, black, green) while keeping it simple, as well as providing a nod to contemporary Wisconsin. 

New Flag for Louisiana

Louisiana is another state with a seal-on-blue design, one unique because of the four pelicans, but otherwise unremarkable.  It went through only a few minor changes for much of its 20th century history and looked like this:

However, back in 2010, the state decided to correct decades of haphazardly following their own flag guidelines and updated it:

This flag has one of the more realistic images I've ever seen (on a flag, anyway).  Compared to the previous versions, this one looks like the birds were painted by James Audubon.  As much as I like the detailed and biologically accurate pelicans, they go against the basic idea of flag simplicity.  Louisiana's is more recognizable than most of the other seal and blue flags, but that isn't good enough, especially when the state has a really awesome design in its past:

This is the flag of the Republic of Louisiana, a country that existed during the brief period between the state's secession from the United States in January, 1861 and its joining the Confederate States a few weeks later.  It was never recognized by any foreign governments, but it had a great flag.  This flag was used through the Civil War, alongside an early form of the pelican banner.  Sadly for me, this design has already been proposed as a replacement at another blog, so I'll have to come up with something on my own.

My first idea was to simplify the pelican design, removing most of the detail of the nest and wings, as well as the banner, and enlarging the birds.  I used the version from the pre-2010 flag because the earlier, more cartoony design was easier to alter without losing the basic idea.  The symbolism of the pelican is well suited to the Pelican State, and the "pelican in her piety" imagry dates back to the Middle Ages in Europe, where it was thought the pelican was such a good mother that she would make herself bleed to feed her hatchlings.  An image with a history that rich is too good to discard.

That design was ok, but from a distance, it would be virtually indistinguishable from either the current flag or the flags of several other states; it would just be a big white splotch on a blue background.  The solution I eventually came to was this:

I've made the pelicans a little smaller and moved them to the upper-left corner, similar to Nevada's flag.  I used the shade of blue from the current flag, but it was kind of boring with a mostly empty blue field.  Thus the red stripe on the right.  The red doesn't have any particular significance, though I suppose it could be reminiscent of the Third National Flag of the Confederacy, but I just chose it because I thought it looked good.  If Tennessee can have a stripe with no specific meaning, I don't see why Louisiana can't as well.

New Flag for Pennsylvania

I went to college up in Pennsylvania and grew used to seeing their flag fairly often.  For some reason, I often got into arguments with a friend of mine over the identity of said flag.  She, a native of the Pittsburgh area, would claim that the flag we saw was that of New York.  I don't know why she thought that, maybe she just wished PA had a better flag or it was a weird memory thing, but it was a long running dispute between the two of us.  I'm not sure where I was going with that story, except maybe to point out the "danger" involved in not having a recognizable state flag, so here's what I'm talking about:

It's just a seal on dark blue, so there's not much else to say.  The horses are neat, I guess, but although text isn't great at relaying tone, I hope my extreme indifference and resignation to this type of design is being felt. 

This flag is boring.  I could go into further detail, but anyone who has read any of my other posts can probably identify why.

Pennsylvania is one of the original thirteen colonies, with a rich history including such luminaries as Ben Franklin, Thaddeus Stevens, and James Buchanan (I don't actually consider Buchanan to be a luminary, I think he was one the worst presidents America has ever had, but he was from Pennsylvania).  As such you would think they could come up with an interesting flag design, but as the above image shows, you'd be wrong.

In thinking about a new design for PA, I tried to identify symbols that were unique to the state.  The one I kept coming back to was the Keystone.  Pennsylvania is often referred to as the Keystone State, and as it is a simple, straightforward design, it should be easy to incorporate.  One example I found of this was made by VoronX over at the Flag Forum site:

My favorite part of this design is the diagonal stripe, which mimic the way the Appalachian Mountains run diagonally through the state.  Blue for the rivers, lakes, and that tiny corner that could be said to be touching the Atlantic, black for coal and industry, and green for agriculture.  Using the template of St. Paul, Minnesota's flag, here's what I've developed:

I've put two designs up because I couldn't decide between them.  I like the idea of just blue, yellow, and black on the first flag; it provides decent contrast.  I also like the addition of green to the bottom design, though that may just be because I like green in general.  The star doesn't have any specific PA meaning, I just thought it breaks up the design without being too busy.  The placement of the keystone was also deliberate, with just a small area of blue spilling over.

On a personal note, I just noticed that I've been working on this blog for a year now, so happy blog-birthday to me! 

New Flag for Minnesota

This week, we'll return to the United States after a sojourn to Australia and a (not so) brief hiatus.  Let's take a look at the flag of Minnesota:

Here we see a typical seal-on-blue arrangement so common for states in the USA.  It hits several of the points on my list of boring flag designs, including blue background, state seal, and text.  As I've worked my way through these flags, I've come to realize that spelling out your state's name on your flag may be a coping mechanism, a feeble attempt to help the citizens identify their own flag.  If it were up to me, I'd solve this problem by not using the same design as everyone else, but then I'm very rarely asked for input in these matters (I like to think it's because I hadn't been born, but who knows).

Minnesota's flag does have one interesting feature that I kind of like; the arrangement of the stars behind the seal suggesting one large star.  It's a little reminiscent of a sheriff's badge.  The seal itself is far too busy, including a farmer, a Native American on horseback, mountains, a waterfall, and a lump in the corner that is supposed to be a stump.  If it's hard to make out that detail in the above image, just imagine trying to decipher it when it is flying from a flagpole.  I think Minnesota can do better.

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes and has a rich and interesting history.  My favorite synopsis of this history however, come from the Onion's hilarious "Our Dumb World" atlas.  It states,

"After being told by Eastern explorers that they had an unusual number of lakes, intrepid Minnesotans started counting, got stuck at 99, and just skipped ahead to the highest number they'd ever heard of, 10,000."

The flag of Minnesota has been the subject of debate for many years.  Some dislike how boring it is and others are troubled by the fact that it takes Manifest Destiny as an inevitable force.  Both are valid and one common solution that has arisen is the "North Star" flag:

This flag isn't too bad, only a few colors, good contrast, simple design, but it probably isn't fair of me to claim I fixed the flag without offering a suggestion of my own:

This flag uses colors taken from the original, placing white on the top to symbolize Minnesota's northern position, yellow and green below for the mineral and agricultural wealth of the state, and a blue circle in the center standing for the state's many lakes.  I like this design, even if it looks a little like India's flag, and white as the top stripe would certainly be unique in American state flags.  If I were the people of Minnesota though, I'd probably go with the "North Star."

New Flag for West Virginia

West Virginia's flag has taken a page from Massachusetts by utilizing a white background, but by adding a blue border:

The border makes this flag stand out, but it isn't enough for me to keep it.  Born in battle, West Virginia came into being during the Civil War.  The common wisdom is that the state of Virginia was split because of slavery, but neglect would be a better, more inclusive term.  After decades of being treated as country cousins and losing money, power, and influence to the wealthy plantation owners in the Tidewater of eastern Virginia, the counties along the Ohio took the opportunity of Virginia's secession to secede themselves.  As the war progressed, the new state added more counties, many of which had voted to leave the Union, until two years after the war when the Supreme Court awarded two more counties from Virginia and thus created the modern state borders we know today.  In light of all that amazing history, isn't it too bad that this flag was the best they could do?

Their slogan is great "Mountaineers are Always Free" (in Latin, of course), but doesn't belong on the flag.  Neither does the name of the state.  Like I said, the border is good, but not good enough.  In the end I decided to go with a little used design in state flags (but ubiquitous everywhere else) the tricolor.  This was my first attempt:

I feel that black is underused in American state flags and it can look so good, contrasting with the sky.  I figured West Virginia, a state built on (literally and figuratively) coal would be the perfect one to utilize it.  The blue and green are also symbolic, standing for the Ohio and Potomac Rivers and the forests of the state.  As I considered this option, I decided that though I like the black being on the flag's fly, but it just wasn't right.  So I decided to change the orientation:

This one I like more, particularly because it now has a geographic component.  The blue still represents the rivers, as well as their place at the "top" of the state (the North Branch of the Potomac on the northeast and the Ohio on the northwest).  The green is for the entire state which lies below the rivers, and the black coal is on the bottom because it is underground.  However, I still thought it needed something, so I made one last change:

The yellow doesn't symbolize anything in particular, it just seemed to strengthen the difference between the bands.  I tried using red, for "born in battle" or something, but didn't like how it looked or what it stood for.  Yellow came in as the compromise choice, as white made it look too much like the flag of The Gambia.

Also fun fact, to me as a Virginian at least, did you know that in John Denver's song "Take Me Home, Country Roads" that the main geographic features that he mentions, the Shenandoah River and the Blue Ridge Mountains, are barely in West Virginia at all?  The Shenandoah touches the state only at the eastern tip and the vast majority of the Blue Ridge are in Virginia, and only a small part is in West Virginia.  Really John, you couldn't have checked a map? (Or whoever actually wrote it, it doesn't matter).

New Flag for Washington

Washington state, like the other flags that rely on their state's seal, has a lot of problems, but at the same time, it has a few features that make it stand out:

First off, it's green.  No other state flag can say that (Delaware comes closest with the teal or whatever it uses for a background).  The green is even in an appropriate shade of dark evergreen, perfect for representing the Evergreen State.  Second, the state is named after George Washington and there he is.  Washington state is nothing if not right to the point.

However, this flag contains the problems that most seal flags share; too much detail and text.  George looks pretty good up there, sort of like a colorized one dollar bill, but that portrait contains far too much detail for a flag.  And of course, the text has got to go.

There are a couple of ways one could go with this flag.  The first I tried was turning George into a silhouette, thus removing the problems of detail and keeping the basic color scheme:

I expanded the portrait a bit so you could now see his shoulders and enlarged it as well.  One criticism I can foresee is that this removes the different colors, but the outline remains both fairly detailed and vague enough that it could be any of the founding fathers (that wig style was popular at the time).  I would disagree with that mostly because you need a little detail to show it is George and not just a random head shadow, but also because the people of Washington are used to seeing him like this.  In Spokane, Seattle, and Bellingham, the symbol used on all state roads is an outline of the first president:

I don't think it would be too much of a stretch for Washingtonians to recognize George from the front as they now do in profile.

My other idea for the Washington flag, but one with which I was never truly satisfied, was to use Mount Rainer, the volcano that dominates the skyline of a large part of the state.  I lived in Seattle for a while and could see it from my apartment most days and was always slightly surprised when I could still see it when I was in Olympia and points east.  I was probably halfway across the state before it would finally sink below the horizon.  The state already uses this mountain on license plates and their state quarter, so maybe it could make the transition to the flag:

In the end, I couldn't decide whether it made more sense for the background or Rainer to be green, and I was never very happy with the outline I used (I felt the green and white provided a nice contrast and couldn't find another color that went well with the green).  To anyone unfamiliar with the state it could just lead to questions like "Why is there a lump on that flag?"  It appears I have again run up against the wall that is MS Paint's (and my own) limitations.  I'll probably end up revisiting this one in the future.

On that note, starting in a few weeks, I'll be going back over the 25 or so flags where I have offered improvements and trying to fix the ones that didn't come out right, mostly based on the suggestions I've received.  On several occasions, I've been given ideas in the comments where I just have to smack myself and wonder why I didn't think of that.  Delaware, Ohio, and Georgia will probably be first, along with the much lamented South Dakota.  After a month or so of "fixing the fixes", I'm thinking of trying my hand at either the Australian state flags or the flags of the various British territories.  If anyone has any instances where the flags I've offered aren't improvements, especially if I've done the flag of your state/province and have totally missed the mark, let me know and I'll do my best to fix the fixes.

New Flag for Kentucky

Another seal on blue flag.  Quick, we need to plan a "You're not original" parade!:

As this flag style goes, Kentucky may be one of my favorites.  Of course, that's like saying the best smelling cow pie, but you know what I mean.  The imagery is at least slightly original and rather than generic depictions of virtue or justice, they've got a frontiersman shaking hands with a city guy (or statesmen, if you believe Kentucky's description).  Of course, all the writing is unnecessary and I'm not a fan of the goldenrod on the lower half.  A flag that promotes allergies is no friend of mine.

According to Kentucky, the people on the flag are not meant to be anyone specific, but the popular idea is that they are Daniel Boone and Henry Clay.  Despite his importance to early America and the events leading to the Civil War, Henry Clay isn't very well known to Americans today.  Daniel Boone is another story and is far more famous (though he is often confused with Davy Crockett).  Boone was a frontiersman, most notable for helping blaze the trail through the Cumberland Gap, leading settlers from Virginia to Kentucky, often breaking British laws in the years before independence to do so.  The thing that really makes him famous was his iconic headgear: the coonskin cap:

This is the second time I've used a hat as the basis for a flag (see Illinois).  I don't count my attempt at a South Dakota flag, because the more I think about it, the more I dislike that one.

The design is highly stylized, reminiscent of the flags which use basic shapes and colors to portray their geography, like The Gambia.  The color choices are meant only to portray a coonskin cap and to be distinguishable from each other.  I actually took the shades from the original Kentucky flag; the tan from the frontiersman's buckskin, the darker brown from the statesman's hair.  I suppose if forced to I could come up with some symbolism for these two colors, but not everything has to stand for something else.  Well, I guess in flags that's usually how it works, so how about...um...the light brown can represent horses, another thing Kentucky is famous for, and the darker brown can be for darker colored horses.  Nailed it.

One final note, according to historians, Boone never wore a coonskin cap.  But when has what actually happened in history ever stopped Kentucky?

New Flag for Kansas

This is the flag of Kansas:

I could make a flat and rectangular joke here, but it would be too easy.  Also, it probably wouldn't be funny.

This flag contains no surprises.  It shouts "KANSAS!" at you in a very large font, and except for the sunflower on the top, there is nothing very unique about this flag.  I would even make the argument that it doesn't represent Kansas very well even with all the detail in the central seal.  Why is there a mountain in the background?  In one of those few stereotypes that ends up being true, Kansas is very flat.  The highest point, Mount Sunflower, is 3,300 feet higher than the state's lowest point, but because Kansas gradually slopes up as you move west from Missouri toward Colorado, "Mount" Sunflower is a mountain in name only.  The point being, the peak on the seal is deceptive.

There is other stuff on the flag too, some stars, a farmer plowing a field, a steamboat, even Native Americans chasing a herd of bison (I kind of like that last one), but all that can be put aside in favor of the one semi-unique feature, the sunflower:

This flag maintains the shade of blue for the background, but is a twist on the sunburst design that other flags use.  This design uses only three colors, one of them being brown which isn't very common, and is fairly simple.  I tried creating this flag with more definition, such as outlining the petals to highlight that it is a flower, but I felt that created unnecessary clutter.

New Flag for New York

New Yorkers can be tricky to appease.  Perhaps that's one of the reasons they have such a boring flag:

To the majority of people who don't live in the state, the term "New York" refers to New York City more often then not.  To those who live in New York City, it means the same thing.  To the 11 million or so who don't live in the Five Boroughs, it refers to the whole state.  Thus the problem of finding symbols that would represent the state in both New Yorkers' eyes and for everyone else.  Obvious choices of the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty are out because they don't have the same resonance for people in Binghamton, Rochester, or Utica (also, the Statue of Liberty is technically in New Jersey).  On the flip side is the fact that Upstate New York has relatively few landmarks that would be easily recognizable.  Niagara Falls is a possibility, as is the State House in Albany, but the former is shared with Canada and the latter looks too much like a mansion Vanderbilt or Hearst might have owned.

A greater unifying theme, and one that is unique to New York, is their history as a Dutch colony.  Before they were named for the Duke of York, New Amsterdam was the capital of New Netherland.  The first president from New York, Martin Van Buren, actually grew up speaking Dutch and learned English as a second language.  The current flags of New York City and Albany reflect this, using the orange, blue, and white taken from the Dutch flag:

The Dutch flag consists of horizontal stripes, like the flag of Albany, so the NYC flag is a bit more distinctive when it rotates them.  However, sticking too close to the NYC flag would doubtless be unpopular elsewhere.  Plus, they both have seals in the center, and we can't have that.  Instead I propose to keep the color scheme, but include a icon to represent the whole state:

Orange, blue, and white remain, speaking to the history of the state and by making orange the most prominent color, giving the flag a unique look that would make it easily distinguishable from the other states.  The narrowness of the blue stripe is meant to represent the Erie Canal, an Upstate landmark that greatly influenced the City as well.  When it was completed in 1825, goods could be taken by water from Chicago and the rest of the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, etc.) to the harbors of New York City, bringing even more business to that already thriving metropolis, as well as other areas of the state.  The Erie canal is one of the few symbols that really tie the state together and this simple, clean rendering is far easier to draw, distinguish, and remember than their current seal on blue arrangement.

New Flags for Alberta and Manitoba

Today marks the end of my Canadian posts, unless of course I can think of something better or Canada gets some new provinces (I'm looking forward to the Turks and Caicos provincial flag).  Sadly, I did not save Alberta and Manitoba for last because they were the best, rather the opposite.  Both flags follow formula used by a number of provinces, one using the Union Jack in the upper hoist and the shield, the other just a shield.  In my struggle to improve these flags, I had difficulty finding appropriate symbols.  In the end, I'm not sure if I succeeded, but we'll leave that for comments.

Manitoba:

Very similar to Ontario's flag, the only difference being the lower half of the shield.  There isn't much to say in favor of this flag, beyond the fact that I like the red field.  Like Saskatchewan, Manitoba is one of the prairie provinces; rectangular, flat, and a huge farming area.  I took none of that into consideration (though the flag is rectangular, does that count?).  The resulting idea reminds me more of Greenland than anything else, but that may just be the color scheme:

For the first time in this series, I've allowed a reference to England/the UK to remain on a flag, mostly because it looked a little boring with just the bison.  You may recognize that bison, as he has been lovingly stolen from the flag of Wyoming (they lost the privilege when they took their awesome flag and stuck a seal in the middle of it).  Though the bison is not the most simple of shapes, it has clean lines and isn't too detailed.  Plus, the bison is a symbol of the province, as seen on the original flag's shield.  I think this flag provides a nice contrast between the Old World and New, using the symbol of their former colonial masters alongside a native animal and using only two colors.

I'll admit at the beginning of talking about Alberta, that I was ready to phone this in.  I had saved it for last because I had no good ideas, but I wanted to finish Canada so I could move on to US states again, or Australia or something.  When you see my suggestions, you may still think I wasn't really trying, but you should see the garbage I had been planning to post.  Now that I've raised your expectations, on to the flag:

Blue background, a shield in the middle, it's almost as if Alberta wants to be a state in the US.  The scenery in the shield is nice, I suppose, depicting how Alberta contains plains, hills, and mountains, but couldn't that be any place with a varied terrain?  My initial ideas have been thrown out and not long ago I considered making this my "official" suggestion:

I don't think there would be much argument that this is better than the original, but it still isn't great.  The flowers are stylized depictions of the prairie rose, the provincial flower, which I took from the Franco-Albertan flag.  It's different, it would be recognisable, and it would stand out among Canadian flags, but then I had a better idea.  In several previous posts, I've confessed my love for flags which incorporate maps, despite the problems they can cause, not the least the issue of design.  I think this flag provides a great opportunity to include a stylized map of the province:

The oddly-shaped chunk taken from the lower right corner is meant to make the blue field into the shape of the province.  Like several other Canadian provinces, Alberta has a lot of right angles, but the way it narrows at the base sets it apart.  I left one flower to give it a splash of color.  I tinkered with making the white space a color (and it is meant to be a white area, not an oddly shaped flag like Ohio or Nepal), including red to offset the flower and black to represent the oil wealth of the province, but they just didn't look right.  One could argue that the position of the flower roughly corresponds to the location of the oil sands, but that may be a bit of a stretch.

With that I'll conclude my series on the provinces of Canada.  There have been a lot of interesting comments on these and in the near future I plan to put together a post where I create the flags that have been suggested.  However, for the next few weeks I think I'll return to the USA.  And If I had a catchphrase, I'd put it here.

New Flag for South Dakota

I'm taking a break from Canada this week, largely because I'm having trouble coming up with good flags for Manitoba and Alberta, but with any luck I'll figure them out by next week. 

South Dakota has one thing going for it: Mount Rushmore.  Ok, that's not really fair, but you understand my point.  The big draw of the state, which it freely admits on its flag, are the massive heads carved into the scared mountains of the Lakota (not a bad microcosm of American history):

This flag returns to a familiar template, that of the seal on blue, and it one-ups the terribleness by adding the state name and the state's nickname (I guess).  The fact that the seal is done in only two colors compounds the problem, making the center a confusing, indistinct mess.  If they're really married to the idea of the seal on their flag, they could at least remove the words.  The sunburst behind the seal provides some promise too:

I've kept the sun for two reasons: 1) It makes the flag stand out a bit, as most others just use a circle and 2) because the state nickname of South Dakota was once the Sunshine State.  I'm sure there's some logic in there somewhere.  The text is gone and replaced with some simple symbols, each done with only white and black.  They're meant to represent the four presidents on Mount Rushmore, thus drawing attention to that famous feature without (literally) spelling it out.

The only complaint I could envision (Ok, one of the complaints) is that is looks like a jumble of clip art.  I freely admit that I agree, but I'm of the opinion that a few simple designs with specific meanings are far more preferable than seals and shields that are both too detailed and attempting to pack as much as possible onto a piece of cloth.

I've also noticed this is the second time I've used Lincoln's hat on a flag.  How many others can say that?