What Makes a Good Flag

The North American Vexillological Association sums up good design in five principles. Keep it simple enough for a child to draw, use meaningful symbolism, limit the palette to two or three basic colors, avoid lettering or seals, and be distinctive.

Flags that follow these rules, like Japan, Canada and Switzerland, work at distance and in miniature. City and state banners that break them tend to vanish into a crowd of blue seals on white bedsheets.