City Flags Are Abominations

flags those wacky banners that fly anywhere and for anything they can convey a message with only a few symbols and colors and they do that job pretty well be it on the street on the battlefield or online there are five basic rules for what makes a flag look good keep it simple use meaningful symbolism use two or three basic colors no lettering or seals and be distinctive sounds simple enough right flags should be recognizable at a distance be simple enough and should absolutely never have lettering now can you take a guess who doesn't follow these rules so i'm in the process of a much larger video a whole video about flags of the world in the same vein as that national anthems video if anybody remembers that for the q a i came across this question which asked me to talk about city flags and dear god was it a rabbit hole as you see i wasn't simply looking through flags of american cities but also city flags across the world in the least shocking development ever there are a lot of different ways that cities choose to represent themselves the more and more i looked across the globe the more american city flags just ended up looking worse you see this video title is a little bit of click bait as it turns out not all city flags are abominations impressive very nice just most of them are in the us mostly from california but i didn't just want to make fun of city flags i wanted to travel the globe through the internet and then once we ventured this wide world we can fully take in the absolute monstrosities that fly over our american cities most cities are not unlike your average u.s state that slaps a seal on a banner and calls it a day your typical european city flag will do the same thing it just so happens to not be a seal but a coat of arms coat of arms are a form of heraldry that can differ in their complexity thanks to culture and history and because of that the general trend seems to be that the further south you go the more complicated the coat of arms will be scandinavian flags for the most part look pretty great they follow all the rules of good flag design which is funny because as it turns out these flags are also coat of arms that were slapped on a banner it just happens to be that most of these symbols were created within the last 40 years so they're simplistic seals in a way show this to a vexology nerd to break their brain norway really likes repeating things on their coat of arms you can't have one fish or two fish we gotta have three fish or three hooks or three birds burden is famed for making up symbols just like it makes up village names but despite its long history of heraldry many of its city flags are just all right their biggest cities are usually just some variation of the saint george's or saint andrew's cross france is a land of either tri-colors or noble symbols as an example brittany has one recurring theme this symbol by the way is the irmine it's often paired with the stout which looks a lot less threatening and much more adorable than the emblem depicts before we leave france though shout out to the flag of malouz looks like the official symbol of the japanese navy if they tumbled through a wormhole most of western europe will use this basic design of a coat of arms on a multicolored banner they're what we think of as the typical medieval flag germany especially is filled with that iconography now while i'm sure there's a fascinating history as to why this certain city is depicted with a wolf or an eagle or even a flag there's only so much time i have if i skip over 90 of these flags i hope you can forgive me now while the coat of arms is often repeated what can differ is the flag it's actually on portugal for instance uses these square flags while austria and liechtenstein don't even use flags they use vertical banners serbias show that it certainly hasn't let go of a particular fallen empire it's kind of funny because greece itself pays no homage to that past the only common symbol that reappears from time to time is this anchor and snake it's an ancient greek symbol for health that has survived the millennia and you may recognize it on your next doctor visit before we leave europe let's take a visit to kosovo which probably has the worst flags in europe there is no real coat of arms only a modern seal many of these even have a gradient including the capital of pristina and i'm a hundred percent certain this statue was just traced an illustrator but while europe as a whole is generally more traditional and safe if there's one place that just has fun with its flags it's russia russia is big and russia has a lot of cities that aren't tied down to things like coat of arms in fact it's kind of a nice blend of both northern minimalism and an attempt at european medieval iconography local russian flags are great because they visually don't look bad at all they follow the rules of good flag design it just happens to be the images on them sometimes look kind of funny so the end result is a bunch of visually appealing flags that happen to look like goofy fictional nations as an example sometimes they're just animals doing something funny like this stork in a boot or an eagle holding a ferret some have more unconventional animals on their banner like a frozen mammoth or a squirrel as funny as these all are in true russian fashion there is no animal more depicted than the bear bear holding a key bear holding a bible bear holding the power of nuclear power itself going from west to east i'm going to briefly talk about asia most city flags in the middle east are typically just logos on a white field [Music] saudi arabia probably has the worst of these the city of mecca the center of the second largest religion in the world that billions prayed towards daily yeah its flag looks like it wants to sell me healthcare and yes that is a translation of text into english you can't make this up really nowhere else except israel has city flags and those are typically just blue and white but with a seal [Music] central asia has some pretty interesting designs but it usually falls back onto using a seal except for the district of tarbagate i don't know why this cow dog and horse are squinting at me i don't want to stick around to find out oolon batar has probably one of the best capital flags i've ever seen imagine if this was the dc flag what's that china banned city flags in 1997. oh well darn yeah turns out china doesn't allow municipalities to have their own flag so uh hey hong kong enjoy that nice flag while you can i guess that just leaves south korea and what is there to really say here i don't know why but white flags with texts just annoy me that's all south korea has it just feels like a nation of corporate logos what's most annoying is so many of these only recently changed and it was to make their flags worse i love that degoose flag has an awkward shade of yellow like it's just dull enough you have a hard time making out what it looks like i appreciate that oh i forgot one what's a japan yeah so japan has the best flags for some reason they all take after the national flag and have a symbol in the center with a mono color background some of these missed the mark a bit sure but even the weakest ones would look like the best city flags in the u.s technically though this does break the rule of not having any text since these symbols are stylized characters so uh yeah checkmate 0 of 10 worst flags ever alright under the americas latin america plays it safe most of their flags are either two or three colors usually they're just tri colors or bi colors and there's nothing inherently wrong with that it still follows the rules for what makes a good flag and it's funny seeing how many tri-colors you can mix and match we if you ever want to make up some fictional european nation just find a random latin american town and copy that but let's be honest if there is anyone that should plagiarize these flags it's us cities so we have traveled the world for the most part city flags are just the coat of arms slapped on some colored banner the outcome can look fantastic or terrible but most of the time a coat will just be mediocre at best u.s cities don't have coats instead we have seals seals for the most part do the same job as coats but they're mainly little dioramas or pictures representing the place they're about so the results are much different a majority of u.s city flags are just a seal on a banner that's it they're like all those state flags i'm not gonna waste your time with the mediocre designs just keep in mind these are the main city flags you'll ever see to keep things interesting i collected a small sample of flags that i think best represents your typical american experience so many of these don't simply break the rules of flag design they break the rules of visual comprehension in general just mind-boggling decisions seals are already generic enough but they at least look official many cities don't even do that right it's like they decided where it should go with a game of pin the tail on the donkey why even have the seal at all if it's so small all of these images just blurred together is this meant to be viewed at a distance of 3 inches pomona seal gives way to the massive bold font that lets you know yup it's pomona so many of these flags are just awkwardly balanced they already have a seal but then need font to repeat the same name again i don't even know what happened with westwego not only does the seal overlap parts of the tri-color but it seems like their seal is a full 5 pixels at most i don't even know if this is just a bad compression from the internet i truly believe this flag is flying somewhere in 240p i mean at least that seal is circular which can't be said about wells maine is this really a seal what are you next are the flags i just call logos because that's all they are what else are they they aren't flags the city councils that picked them knew nothing about what makes a good flag nor did they care these flags are some of the most american things you can imagine as they don't have symbolism or heraldry they only have advertising it's like if the us flag was made in microsoft word and every morning school children pledged allegiance to bold letters that say usa there was really only one state where these popped up all the time can you guess all of these flags just scream florida to me it's that cheapness the combination of so many things going wrong it embodies the sunshine state i love it sometimes these logos are paired with gradients gradients that are made in powerpoint oh man i love them logo flags are just unsalvageable usually you can do a few tweaks that make a flag look good but not these they're nothing but text once you remove that and whatever clip art they desire to find online what else is left it's removing the veil and seeing the husk that is this town's identity jesus that's a little too harsh okay as much as i'm bullying these flags i want to clarify the reason that these all probably exist is because they were birthed from council meetings of old people who probably just wanted to get it over with you think elderly susan overlooking a constituency of 2000 people wants to be lectured about what makes a good flag by some nerd and even if all these flags followed every rule of good flag design there's only so many designs that can go around one important rule is to be distinctive and have good symbolism but how do you make one suburban middle class town look different than the next suburban middle class town was there some unique history one had that the other five miles down didn't it because even if they had all perfect designs eventually they just blend together and how do i know that because a place like that already exists puerto rico it doesn't have a functioning government but i'll be damned if every little village in town doesn't have a flag that follows all the rules of good design look at these they're little nation states it's a different cultural attitude one that doesn't really exist in the us it used to not exist i mean times are changing and flags are improving while towns and villages have logos on their flag i can forgive that what i can't forgive is a major city having a terrible flag or an average city birthing an abomination look at this they put it between the colors why is the o so long so many flags use loving clip art they couldn't find an actual designer so they just googled what they thought would look nice new work put a seal on its flag but they seem to have lowered the opacity so much that you can't even tell what this is i actually like complicated flags sometimes i'll be an avid defender of the maryland flag until the day i die but this is too much i get it's supposed to be like heraldry but these are images that clash too much if you couldn't tell this image is supposed to be a phoenix rising from the ashes and it's just executed terribly it's an open secret how bad this flag is and residents have been wanting to change it for years milwaukee do i even need to say anything this flag is one of the poster childs for bad flag design it's been beaten to death by the internet this impressively breaks every rule of flag design the overly complicated images colors that clash with one another the multiple uses of flags within this flag i never even noticed the tiny american one until writing this video but still there are worse starting off with beverly hills yes that beverly hills the seal itself is comical every little image brings in something new all wrapped together in this building which i'm a hundred percent sure is just a jpeg with a photoshop filter it's gaudy and looks terrible but it probably took millions to make provo provo provo i'm impressed the city of sanger has stuck with this flag since the 80s assuming it's the 80s because this looks like it was ripped straight from a vhs from a 1988 infotape there's such things as too many stripes and tampa shows it as an ohio man myself i typically love non-rectangular flags but this cannot compare to the others it feels like it tried to be a rectangular flag but gave up in the middle a good way i'd describe this flag is indecisive what symbols do we want uh slap all of them together there's a lot of bad flags but two i think are the most infamous are ones you probably already know about sadly these are so bad they no longer are around just like the great ark first cedar rapids it looks like an old-timey attraction the sketched out landscape the text that was certainly written in two minutes this was a beauty that while ugly had character now while the new fancy flag certainly works as a design and looks good it doesn't have that history that this beauty once had nothing has more character though nothing can compete with the king of bad flags the flag of pocatello idaho [Music] yes that's right there is a copyright in trademark logo on that flag take it in let it encompass you this is the peak of the mountain the end of our journey we explored the world learning of different cultures and designs only to end up here in pocatello and fully appreciating the majesty that is this flag yeah originally i was going to talk about some actually good flags and they exist trust me they're just not that funny this video ended up being a lot longer than i thought it would be and i kind of want to talk about them in another project hint but uh hey city flags maybe you didn't even know cities had flags but they do and most aren't good that's the lesson bye password come on you know it's me i need the password uh okay let me think uh maybe it's here somewhere time's ticking okay shut up ah drat i forgot well you know this wouldn't have happened if you remember the password was nordpass the sponsor of today's video oh no not another integration i didn't sign up for this did you know the most common password is one two three four five six really that's that's my password and that's because you're a big dummy passwords are incredibly important they're the keys to every aspect of our online life and sometimes those keys can get stolen by miscreants and near due wells but that's where nordpass comes in handy it's a service which allows you to not only remember your passwords but keep them secure while doing it sometimes having your browser remember for you isn't the best idea it's smart to have a service specifically designed with safety and protection of your passwords in mind nordpass keeps your passwords locked up tight saving you time by not only auto-filling your passwords but auto-generating new protective ones as well now entrusting a service with your passwords may make you uneasy but nordpass is a service built only for you it's an encrypted vault that only you can access and nobody else and if one of your passwords is compromised you'll be instantly alerted get a two-year nordpass premium plan plus an additional one month for free it's risk-free with nordpass's 30-day money-back guarantee go to nordpass.com ah and use the code ah to get this deal keep your password safe and organized wait what was that url again i was busy changing my password hey how do you spell password that's nordpass.com ah you probably shouldn't have that be your password either jimmy come on this is like internet 101 stuff you

Channel: AlternateHistoryHub

Views: 764,307

Keywords: City Flags Are Abominations, City Flags, Vexiollogy, City flags bad, bad city flags, bad flags, funny flags, alternatehistoryhub, flag history, alternatehistoryhub flags, alternate history, pointlesshub, national anthems, national anthems of the world, city flags of the world, fun with flags, pocatello idaho, american city flags, funny history, funny flag video, history meme

Id: yYwhL2Veh6w

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 31 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Mr_Biscuits_532]

I'm disappointed Cusco, Peru didn't get a shoutout. They recently had to put an Incan seal on their flag to stop people confusing it with the Gay Pride rainbow flag.

[u/live_love_run]

I wish my hometown’s flag (Corpus Christi, TX) had been featured. Meets vexillological rules, no words, two colors. Light blue with a white seagull and eight stars.

[u/Chimera-98]

About the Israeli ones, israel doesn’t really have city flag, what we do have is city coat of arms ,when flag is needed we just put the coat of arm on mono color or replace the Star of David with it

[u/Lucky_G2063]

I thought the video was pretty interesting, but he gets Puerto Rico wrong & thinks it's not in the US at 12:52.