Good Flag, Bad Flag, No Flag
If you’re like me, you like a good flag. Maybe it was Scouting that started it, but I’ve always enjoyed having a flag that represented a group I belonged to. Flags can be rallying points, physically and metaphorically, for the people they represent. Flags are symbols of pride in your group and are one of the most effective tools for spreading that pride that we’ve ever come up with.
Countries, sports teams, and many municipalities have their own flags specifically to foster civic pride internally and broadcast that unified pride externally. That brings us to our topic today: Freeport, Illinois doesn’t have an official flag. At least, I couldn’t find that it does and if I’m wrong, it just means we have an underutilized one. I think that should change. Freeport, Illinois should have a flag.
There’s a trap here though. Most municipal flags are garbage. That’s according to The North American Vexillological Association, (flag enthusiasts and scholars). These are people who know and care a lot about flags. To help design a good flag, they have a 16-page pamphlet covering five basic principles.
1.) Keep it Simple. It should be so simple a child can draw it from memory. You shouldn’t need an art degree to participate in civic pride. One way to test this is to draw the flag on a 1”x 1.5” piece of paper. That’s the size most flags appear when they are flying in the wind.
2.) Use meaningful symbols. Symbols may need to be explained once, like the 13 stripes on the U.S. flag, but once you know what they mean, the meaning should be self-evident.
3.) Use two or three basic colors. A lot of this goes back to principle 1, but it also helps in spreading the symbol. The more colors used, the more expensive producing the flag is. Also, by the time you get four or more colors, from far away they start to blur together.
4.) No lettering or seals. This is the big trap cities fall into. The flag should speak for itself. It shouldn’t need the town name to explain its symbols. Many cities put the seal on a monochromatic background to make a flag. NAVA calls such flags an “S.O.B.” or seal on a bedsheet. Seals are for official documents held in your hands where the seal can be easily read. Flags are meant to be simple and evocative from far away. Freeport has a seal and there are elements we could pull from that for the flag, but a seal and a flag are different things.
5.) Be distinctive. Flags represent a unique population so they should be unique symbols. Ask New Zealand and Australia what it’s like to have flags that are too similar. There are repeated trends and some good ideas floating around the world of flags, but if a community is going to have something to take pride in, it should be uniquely theirs.
There are exceptions to all these rules but sticking close to them when possible is how to avoid coming to a vexillological disaster like that of Milwaukee, WI or the old flag of Pocatello, ID. Look that last one up and see how they have recently improved it.
It’s not common for a city the size of Freeport to have a flag. Most cities that do are big metropolitan areas like Chicago (a good flag example) and New York (a bad flag example). There’s no rule against it though and with the many artists in the area, I bet we could come up with something to be proud of.
