The Pride of the Vending Machine

After watching the Ted Talk on what makes a flag successful I discovered the five rules of good flag designs:

1. Keep it simple, so simple a child can draw it from memory.

2. Use meaningful symbolism.

3. Use two to three basic colours.

4. No lettering or seals of any kind.

5. Be distinctive or be related.

I found these rules really interesting as I find minimalist art appealing, I also enjoyed looking at peoples flags and comparing them the rules and see if they followed them or not.

I made this flag to engage with my surroundings it gave me a reason to wander around the campus- a new environment for me- and focus on the colours and the shapes. This activity has shown me that you need to look carefully and closely at your environment.

I believe that my flag was very successful. The finished outcome was very powerful and portrays a sense of unity. The circle in the centre is what creates the sense of unity as its as if the community is all together in the centre.

The texture of the sponge technique -used by Chris Shaw - is very unique and i find it too be quite engaging as each rectangle has a different pattern.

There is ambiguous link to my flag and the space I choose to create a flag for. The colours are similar as the main colour of my space was orange with small details of blue on some buttons. The circle in the middle is meant to represent the blue buttons in the space, however I flipped the colours as the overall flag was more successful. Due to the inverted colours it could be difficult to connect the flag to the space unless you studied it closely.

I believe in some instances flags can break the 5 rules. For example (not to pick favourites) but the Welsh flag doesn't follow rule number one as the dragon is quite hard for a child to draw correctly but the flag is still successful as it is it follows every other rule and the people of Wales take pride in the flag which is what the whole idea of a flag is about, in my opinion. One way this is shown is through athletes - especially in the Olympics- when they drape the flags over themselves as they wanted to represent their countries and make them proud. Another example of people taking pride of the flag of their country is when soldiers die in war and they have the flag draped across the coffin- to show the pride that country feels for the fallen.