Designing for pride identity flags sports

i spent

a lot of my childhood in the back seat

of a car

driving the six-hour stretch of i-10

between my home

in texas and my family in louisiana

and of course in the pre-ipad days my

only source of entertainment was

looking out the window and as a little

kid you can really only see like

telephone poles and

billboards and flags

that drive is as flat as it is boring

but there are two major visual changes

that you will notice as a child first of

all

all of the billboards suddenly become

about casinos as you get close to

louisiana so you know you’re close

but then the big one and the one that

fascinated me as a kid and the one that

i’m still fascinated by to this day

was the flags because in texas

there are a lot of flags more texas

flags than united states ones usually

but then as you cross the sabine river

bridge over into louisiana you just stop

seeing flags all together

certainly not louisiana ones i’d get to

my family’s home and they didn’t fly

louisiana flags either

so i kind of grew up wondering are they

just like not proud to be from louisiana

and that’s not the case they think

louisiana is the greatest place in the

country

they’ve never been to utah

i like to think that this monotonous

back and forth drive really shaped me as

a person because i grew up

i became a designer but i also became a

vexillologist

a researcher of flags and a

vexillographer when you put those

together a designer of flags

so at texas a m where i work and where i

live i gave a ted talk about a year ago

about flags that’s why i was invited

here today

and in it i started with a quote and i’m

going to start with that same quote

but then today i’m going to take it a

completely different place

so wally ollens he’s the father of what

we call

nation branding and what he said was

people want to belong and then they want

to display

symbols of belonging we all feel this

everyone wants to be part of a tribe

whether that’s your family unit

or your you know church or sports team

whatever it may be

but i’m fascinated by the second part as

a designer i’m like why do we choose

these symbols

to display our belonging what makes them

good or bad

in the next few minutes we’re going to

be talking about the relationship

between

three things personal identity flags

and sports brands now unless you’re a

professional athlete

it would be a bit weird for you to have

your own personal logo

right and i can almost guarantee that no

one in this room or anybody watching has

their own personal flag that they fly

outside of their house

that would be weird even for me okay

instead most of us

we use existing symbols and we adopt

them

as part of who we are but more

importantly we adopt them because we

want to display them

and get people to perceive us in a

certain way

they are communication design is

communication

that’s what separates design and art

design can be successful or unsuccessful

but a lot of people don’t make that

connection that flags are design

flags can be successful they can be well

adopted and used and recognized and they

can be unsuccessful

when the tribe doesn’t want to display

them as symbols of belonging because

usually they’re pretty ugly or something

you know

so after years of childhood backseat

boredom i’ve traveled the country myself

i’ve gotten to see how lots of states

display their pride

and belonging and i’ve come up with this

theory

it’s simple to understand i call it the

pride funnel basically

you take the largest tribe the nation

and you work your way down to the

smaller

and smaller sub-tribes and someone’s

personal identity usually flows in this

pattern as well

to illustrate this we’ll make up a fake

person we’ll call him dan

dan lives in denver colorado he’s a

colorado avalanche fan

but you know that’s not cored who dan is

you know dan

you know if if the avalanche lose a few

times have some losing seasons

he might just stop liking hockey that’s

fine but he’s always proud to be from

denver he can’t change that about

himself

and he’s proud to be from colorado more

than that because colorado’s got some

great things outside of denver

and then of course all of us can relate

you know when there’s like a world cup

or a war

no matter what state you’re from we

unite as a nation as the larger

tribe so this is easy to understand but

i’m fascinated by that second part

how do flags fit into this and either

flow correctly

or completely mess this whole thing up

so these are some well-designed flags

not just because they follow the rules

of flag design

most of you could name every single one

of these

but they’re successful because they also

flow down the pride funnel so the sports

teams in those states

they adopt some of the symbolism and

colors of those states

and why because there’s embedded

emotional attachment

to those state flags and the teams can

utilize that

that can increase fan loyalty and ticket

sales and merch etc

so let’s use the colorado avalanche

again they’re my favorite hockey team i

don’t know if you all figured that out

yet

so when they started they didn’t really

have any colorado symbolism in their

stuff

but see they they had this weird foot on

their shoulder

and they changed that to the colorado

sea

over time and now they have full-on

alternate uniforms that are colorado

theme like the hat i’m wearing today

nowhere is this like calling to state

symbolism more important

than in college sports where i work

because in college you are competing

against other universities

for fans and for recruits so being the

premier team

in your state is super important

this here on the left this is texas tech

they use the texas flag on their

uniforms

now i said i’m from texas i’m fighting

texas aggie

the other type of aggies and

when i see this i have a positive

feeling because i like the texas flag

but

i feel weird rooting against texas tech

in this situation though i always will

right indiana here indiana they’re

recruiting against purdue and notre dame

and so they want to be indiana’s team

so they put indiana’s flag on their

helmet sometimes and of course

their name is the hoosiers they take the

whole state’s demonim and they make it

their team nickname

and then of course maryland love it or

hate it they use their state flag on

their uniforms more than really anybody

i like it i’m a flag nerd i can

understand why people don’t

but you see some schools they just can’t

do this even if they tried

here’s oregon the oregon ducks doesn’t

look like oregon

because it’s a throwback uniform it’s

cool but the thing that doesn’t work

here

is not the uniform it’s great it’s the

flag

the flag of oregon does not translate

does not communicate

what it needs to in fact i would argue

that the oregon ducks logo or the state

shape of oregon

there are more identifiable symbols of

oregon than the state since the flag

itself

some teams will even go as far as to

redesign their state flag just to fix

this

problem when the florida panthers

rebranded

they just went ahead and fixed florida’s

flag as well they took the seal out and

they threw in a sun for the sunshine

state

i like this i think this is a great

florida flag

but by far the most common case we see

is whenever there’s a bad flag at the

state or the city level or both

these passionate citizens they want to

belong they want to display symbols of

belonging

so they will go down the pride funnel

they’ll grab something from the team

level a logo a color whatever they’ll

bring it up with them

and this team will fill this identity

void that is left like here in los

angeles

but by far the biggest example of this

is new york city

new york city’s flag is terrible most of

you have never seen it before

that’s crazy the flag of new york

state’s even worse

so if i’m a passionate new yorker and i

want to get a tattoo

what would i get

i could go to the yankees logo

i heart new york statue of liberty big

apple skyline there’s so many things but

there’s not that one thing

like chicago for instance everybody’s

got a chicago flag tattoo i’m surprised

i don’t have a chicago flag tattoo

but so what what are these states losing

are they losing anything by not having a

good flag

well they don’t they’re not losing

anything that governments really care

about that’s for sure because

unlike a sports team you don’t pay your

taxes

based on how much you identify with or

like your state though i think that

would be a pretty cool tax policy

no these politicians you know they’re

not going to go out of their way through

the bureaucracy and the red tape

to fix even the ugliest state flag

because it just doesn’t benefit them

that much

and for the public it’s usually a flag

design contest and they

you know want to get everybody’s

opinions you submit something

yours doesn’t get picked obviously you

know then they start put piecemealing

them all together taking the best things

from

from everybody’s and it becomes this

sort of frankenstein thing that’s

certainly different but not better

so why am i why am i saying all this

well it’s because i did something about

it

uh so during the pandemic i started a

flag company flags for good

and uh i just went ahead and did the

thing that my childhood self would want

me to do and i just started redesigning

all the us state flags that i didn’t

like and

i wanted to show you some of them so

this is colorado we’ve already

established great flag

i give it an a minus there’s one thing

that bugs me really bad about this one

and it’s the little tips of the sea why

are they not touching that white line

so i just went ahead and fixed it and uh

print this and now

design conscious coloradans can go and

fly this anytime they want

oklahoma this has some potential this

indigenous shield’s really cool

needs to be simplified the words need to

leave

but what you what’s cool about oklahoma

is at the city level they actually have

a great flag

in tulsa oklahoma they have this

beautiful flag

they’ve already rendered this indigenous

shield in a very simple and elegant way

so in an example of good design going up

the pride funnel

we’ll take that we’ll throw in some

historical flags of oklahoma

and i think we’ve got a better oklahoma

flag here

no legislature needed people can just go

fly this right now

louisiana you know there’s so much

culture

so much color so much history in

louisiana this current flag

doesn’t show any of that

and so i started with purple purple is a

color that is not used in flag design

very much

so i thought that was cool i did a gold

fly edge

so it flaps in the wind and i threw a

floor to leigh on there

better flag of louisiana and of course i

gave some to my family so they could

finally display

their louisiana pride but i wanted to

end with utah

i’m honored to be invited here to speak

i love utah i come here as much as i can

and i want to get this one right there’s

actually been some current uh

talk about redesigning the utah flag in

fact yesterday

some legislation got passed so there is

progress and that’s great

because utah has so much to draw from

but even like your nba team has a name

left over from when they were in new

orleans where jazz made a heck of a lot

more sense

so to redesign utah’s flag i

started with some of my experiences here

i started with this red earth

this iconic red earth and out of the

earth comes five

white peaks white for salt

for the purity of heart here and for the

best snow on earth

and then instead of the beehive i

departed a little bit from that which

could be controversial but i went with a

honeycomb

a golden honeycomb it’s the product of

the beehive

and it’s a more elegant shape easier to

use in different applications

so this state

utah deserves a flag where utahns can be

proud to

show their belonging to this wonderful

place

and this isn’t just to benefit like

souvenir shops or so you guys can have

cool stickers for your snowboards which

all of you should have gotten in your

welcome packets right but no

as we’ve seen states with well-designed

flags they don’t necessarily have more

state pride

but they do own their visual story

their visual identity is not tied up in

a sports team or whatever else

i’m not saying that this needs to be

the final flag of utah

i’m not but i am sick

but i do hope that by making these

better state flags and putting them out

into the world

it sparks conversation from the public

and politicians alike

to come together and want something more

want something better

thanks

you