Best: Las Cruces
Ooh – new favorite. I feel the super simple color scheme is a terrific match for the very unique and different symbol in the middle. I find it hard to believe that NAVA didn’t even rank this one.
That symbol? Well, obviously, “Las Cruces” means “the crosses.” But did you get that there are 3 of them? Yup, black, white, black; left to right; back to front. But if you’re not getting it, you’re not alone. Here’s what some random dude on the Interwebs had to say about it:
Looking at that thing hurts my head...It's like a bad optical illusion. Can't they just put three crosses on it completely separate?
This town of not quite 100,000 is home to New Mexico State, White Sands, and Spaceport America.
Worst: Belen
Perhaps this would make a nice beach blanket. A municipal flag? Not so much.
So, here’s the straight poop on this baby from no less a personage than the town secretary:
The flag was designed by Ronnie Torres, the Mayor of Belen with the help of Bruce Prater of Graphics Art Station, a local business in Belen. Mr. Torres wanted the flag to signify Belen as the City different [sic]. The train is to represent the long time relationship of Belen with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad "BNSF" and the Harvey Museum associated with the railroad. The Star is representative of the star of Bethlehem, the meaning of Belen, being Bethlehem.
So, I actually like that they tried to tie in the two themes, the railroad and the star of Bethlehem. Perhaps they were just trying a little too hard.
You know, the town actually has a pretty nice seal:
That definitely gets the railroad theme across. Maybe if they just combined that with a star, they might be just fine:
I’m sure someone out there with some graphic design skills can do a better job of that than I could.
By the way, in addition to the association with the railroad and Bethlehem, this town of 7,000 also lays claim to being where waffle fries were first cut.
Stop the presses! Between the time this was written and the time I published it, Belen came up with a new flag:
Well played, Belen. Well played.
May I make a suggestion though? That's a lotta text over there on the right. How 'bout a simple "Belen / 1740"? Thank you.
New York
Best: Buffalo
It’s fairly simple, but I just absolutely love those lightning bolts. They’re pretty unique, but they also do a good job signaling Buffalo’s important role as an early adopter of electric power. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Buffalo used to be known as “The City of Light.” Not to be confused with that other City of Light across the pomd, of course.
Honorable mention: New York
Worst: Governors Island
What is that? It actually looks uncannily like a toy of my youth, called a doodlebug. (I might have gotten that name wrong, though, as I couldn’t find any pictures of one on Google Images.)
You’ve probably already guessed that that rather odd shape is in fact the island itself. Indeed, you may even know that Governor’s Island is in New York Harbor, and that it owes that peculiar shape to its having been built up over the years, mostly by the US military.
Other than that very freaky shape, though, it’s not a bad flag. It was, in fact, fashioned by a design firm, one Level M. Maybe if we just subbed out the doodlebug for something else. How about a classy/fancy “G I”:
North Carolina
Check out that cool border, would ya. It’s very heraldic, is called a “componee,” and is obviously taken from the coat of arms in the seal.
And that coat of arms happens to belong to one Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort, and one of the Lords Proprietor of Carolina. Those were 8 English dudes who basically owned the Carolinas back in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries.
The town of Beaufort itself dates all the way back to 1709. A quaint coastal village of 2,000, it may be most famous for its associations with the pirate Blackbeard (his flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge was recently discovered and excavated nearby).
Honorable mention: Raleigh
Worst: Jacksonville
Busy, busy, busy. Would you believe this baby has no less than 66 characters on it? It’s not a flag – it’s a press release!
So, what’s a good fix? The Marines are a huge part of the town, so maybe we could start with a Marine red background:
I was thinking we could throw the city seal on that, but the flag is basically the seal, so that’s not going to work. Okay, I’m stuck.
North Dakota
It’s a little busy, I’ll admit. That thing in the bottom is pretty clever though (it represents the confluence of the Red and Red Lake rivers, where the city is situated).
Maybe we could just eliminate all the other stuff and make the graphic a little bigger (and, yes, I am redoing the best the state has to offer):
Grand Forks, with a population of not quite 100,000, is the 3rd largest city in North Dakota. Right along the border with Minnesota, it’s mostly known for getting flooded. It’s also the location of a large Air Force base and the University of North Dakota.
Worst: Drayton
So, your first question is probably, “What is that thing?” Well, would you believe it’s a beet? Yup, a sugar beet – which happen to be white, not red.
Drayton is, in fact, the location of a large sugar refinery, and is in the middle of major sugar beet country. (It’s also just a little up the Red River from Grand Falls, and has a population of 800.)
Now, that doesn’t explain all the other stuff going on here – the name, the colors, the shapes ... Maybe if we just focused on a couple of these. I like the beet, but if we go with that, how do we design it so it would be suitable for a flag (unlike that terribly misshapen, cartoonish thing that’s there now)?
Well, Drayton is also known as the Baseball Capital of North Dakota, as well as the Catfish Capital of the North. So perhaps there are some ideas there.
Ohio
Best: Minster
Somebody put some thought into this one. Indeed, the designer, David Hoying, explains that the colors “are the colors of the flag of the city of Munster [in Germany],” where the first settlers came from and which the town is named after.
The nice, simple shield also has meaning as well. Oddly, though, Hoyning gave everything but that canal boat in the lower left corner a very … um, Saxon/pagan? … vibe:
- CROSS - The cross represents the strong Christian faith of the community. This faith was rooted in the late eighth century when Christianity was brought by the victorious Charlemagne and the venerable Benedictine missionaries to the defeated Saxon tribes in the area that was to comprise the Dioceses of Munster and Osnabruck.
- OAK LEAF AND ACORN - The acorn is a symbol of the Saxon tribes to whom the oak leaf served as a symbol of strength. The early pagan ancestors of the settlers of Stallostown worshipped the oak tree as a deity. The "tree of life" was an important feature of many customs that developed later in the Münsterland.
- HORSE HEADS - Two crossed wooden equine heads are another ancient symbol of the Saxon nature religion. These heads were placed at the peak of the front gable of the old homeland farmhouses to ward off evil and thus served as an omen of good fortune.
Worst: Latty Township
Well, it is a bold color combination, I can say that for it. Maybe a little too bold. It could use a little color contrast too. I find the black on dark green particularly unhappy.
Not sure where to go with this one. Nothing I could uncover about the town is helping me any here either. Seems like it’s a teeny place of under 200 people, dates back to the 1880s, and is in the northwest corner of the state. And that’s about all I could find on it.
More links:
The diamond in the Cumberland RI seal probably represents Diamond Hill:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Hill_(Cumberland,_Rhode_Island)