3250: Flag Design

2026-05-29T16:21:21Z

2A01:E34:EC54:CD0:70FE:3378:135A:7659: /* Flag features */ squares are a specific kind of rectangle, so the sentences I edited made no sense

{{comic
| number = 3250
| date = May 25, 2026
| title = Flag Design
| image = flag_design_2x.png
| imagesize = 678x428px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Every place has a local cryptid; more places need a local Pictish Beast, a creature in historical art that's drawn so weirdly that no one can tell what animal it's supposed to be.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a recursive flag. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

This comic is a parody of normal flag designs, but with comically exaggerated features to the point of ridicule. For example, animals and stars are common features on flags. However normal flags don't feature smaller versions of themselves as part of the design, are mostly flat rectangles, and lack interactive elements like buttons.{{Citation needed}} It is designed similarly to the [[xkcd Phone]] series, with a number of improbable, labeled features making the flag resemble a combination of a graphic arts doodle, financial instrument, paper flyer, and webpage. The caption of "I think our flag design committee really knocked it out of the park" references the common problem of {{w|design by committee}}, where a design made without a unifying vision, but rather many compromises between competing visions, results in overcomplexity, banality and internal contradictions, all of which are present on this flag.

The title text references the animal on the flag, with [[Randall]] expressing his opinion that more places should use hard-to-distinguish representations of animals, like on this flag. A {{w|cryptid}} is an animal, such as the {{w|Loch Ness Monster}}, whose existence is disputed or unproven by science. As Randall notes, {{w|List_of_cryptids#List|many places have a local cryptid}}, and he appears to think this renders them less interesting than ''real'' animals that cannot be unambiguously identified from their cultural representations. One such example is the {{w|Pictish Beast}}, an animal depicted in many stone carvings across Scotland.

Daft and improbable flags have also been the subject of [[1815: Flag]] and [[2528: Flag Map Sabotage]].

=== Flag features ===

{| class="wikitable"
|+ From the top, going clockwise
|-
! Feature !! Description !! What this has to do with flags
|-
| A rough drawing of an unusual, and possible chimeric, creature in grey. || In the title text, Randall relates it to the {{w|Pictish Beast}}, an animal that appears frequently in the {{w|early medieval}} culture of the {{w|Picts}} of Scotland, and which has provoked much debate about what animal it is meant to represent. Randall has flipped this around, taking an animal whose identity is disputed and incorporating it into a cultural artefact in an attempt to get assistance with identifying it.
Another possible candidate for the creature is the {{w|Questing Beast}}, which has some versions of its legendary description that could relate to the drawn form of the flag's representation.
| Several flags, and even more so many coats of arms, have animals on them, often one native to, or heraldically representative of, the polity the flag belongs to. Some are quite abstract, making it difficult for the uninformed to identify the original animal (though not so much so as in this flag).
|-
| National flag || Incorporating a flag into another flag is not uncommon, such as with the {{w|Union Jack#Use in other flags|Union Jack}} found in the flags of many current and former British colonies and territories, or with national flags being included in naval ensigns, but a flag that includes a smaller version of itself as a detail is a novelty. Typically, such inclusions are to indicate a link to the entity whose flag is included, but in this case it would be self-referential and meaningless. This could also cause an issue by leading to a {{w|Droste effect|recursive loop}} of nested flags, similar to in [[878: Model Rail]], but thankfully this feature is omitted in the smaller, included flag.|| Occasionally flags do include miniaturized representations of themselves, often through including a coat of arms that itself includes the flag, such as the {{w|flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan}} in use from 2013 to 2021. That flag, like this one, simplifies the nested design enough to avoid further recursion.
|-
| Island (not a specific island, just a tribute to islands in general) || A map showing an island and two small islets. || Elements on flags often have hidden meanings that aren't obvious at first glance, such as a hidden map of the country on it. This is an example of an element with a near-complete lack of meaning whatsoever: an outline of an island that doesn't refer to a specific island. It is also one of the many random and strange tributes on this flag. The {{w|flag of Cyprus}} contains an outline of the island of Cyprus, and the {{w|flag of Tuvalu}} contains stars symbolizing the islands of that country.
|-
| Tap here to pay taxes || This is the icon often used on payment cards to indicate the availability of contactless payment. Besides the inherent ridiculousness of adding such a feature to a flag, flags are generally flown very high so that they can easily be seen, making RFID-activated features, which typically require relatively close proximity, difficult to use. || This may be riffing on the {{w|flag of South Korea}}, which includes four trigrams which could (if you squint) be considered to look somewhat like this logo.
|-
| Tribute to topology || {{w|Topology}} is the study of the underlying geometric form of things. Most flags have a very simple topology, being a single sheet of material. A strip along the edge of this flag appears to have been separated and twisted by one half-turn to turn the flag into a {{w|Möbius strip}}. This would be difficult to do in real life without disconnecting and gluing, sewing or otherwise affixing parts of the flag together. || A few flags are known among {{w|vexillologists}} for having {{w|List of flags with reverses that differ from the obverse|different front and back sides}}. Talking about the "front and back sides" of a Möbius strip flag is conceptually difficult. Also many flags include notable {{w|topography|topo''graphic''}} features, such as mountains, rivers, etc., and Randall may have deliberately confused the two terms.
|-
| GDPR consent || GDPR refers to the European Union's {{w|General Data Protection Regulation}}, a law about privacy of personal information that seems mostly to result in websites displaying complicated (and iffy) methods of disabling unwanted data-gathering if you do not just 'accept everything'. The flag apparently includes similar buttons for the 'user' to interact with, which implies the flag somehow collects data about people who view (or touch) it. This may be related to the "Tap here to pay taxes" feature. Of note is the "customize" option, implying that the flag can somehow present a range of data processing options for the 'user' to select from, albeit that this particular 'button' appears to be shown as disabled and thus unavailable. (Some real-world versions of such accept/customise dialogues do at first present inactive configuration/rejection choices, to try to nudge visitors into accepting the default "Accept All", but will activate all the options either after a short time or after scrolling the nagging popover, to at least ''technically'' comply with the rules that forced them to offer this choice, without making it easier to reject them all than they have to.) The technology or design features it uses to do this are unknown.
Alternatively, this flag could be designed to be embedded as a display on some form of console, where this and the "Tap here to pay taxes" features would make some sense, and the version on the physical flag could end up being purely cosmetic, like the power level and other status bar information includeed on a prior [[Flag]] design.
| The possibility that merely looking at a flag would commit you to some sharing of personal data is a troublesome concept (even more so than with webpages, where it is already a known, but seemingly inevitable, issue). The apparent provision of the ability to customize this would ''seem'' to be better than given no option, but it may well be impossible or impractical to do so.
Raw text is also rare, [https://www.countryflags.com/tags/text/ but not unknown], in national flags, and in those cases is still intended to represent the respective nation's identity and not serve as a non-flaglike function, like this element or the citizenship one.
|-
| Interested in citizenship? Take one! || This is a rather unorthodox method of gaining new citizens, which mimics a form of advertising that typically provides contact details on each strip and allows people to take them away and contact the advertiser at their own convenience with an expression of interest. This has the same accessibility problems as the previous two interactive features, in that it would be difficult to reach the strips to tear them off when the flag is flown high. Additionally flags are generally designed to be hard to tear. The design of the flag within the flag implies that the strips that have been torn off are part of the flag design rather than due to use. This may be an intentional attempt to create {{w|artificial demand}} by falsifying {{w|social proof}}: making it look like citizenship is in demand and thereby making it more desirable. Alternatively, the central flag may automatically update to reflect the removed strips, using the same unknown fabric-screen technology as the GDPR interface. || There are some flags (such as {{w|flag of the Republic of Venice|that of the Republic of Venice}}) which have a fringed design similar to this. However, none have pull-off strips!

The {{w|United States Flag Code}} forbids flying a tattered US flag. This is in stark contrast with the design here, where the flag might get more and more 'tattered' with time by design.
|-
| Rounded corners || Rounded corners are a way to display {{w|graphical widget}}s in computer interfaces for purely aesthetic reasons (as progressively happened to the [https://cdn.geekzone.co.nz/images/blog/startevolution.JPG Start Button] from Windows XP to 7). It isn't unlikely that this flag-feature is being used to parody the trend of making virtual objects (often inherently rectangular) look more like smooth-edged physical objects. Could be a reference to how many everyday objects have rounded corners to reduce risk of injury or make them more pleasant to use, although this is a moot point with flags since they are generally constructed using cloth that are based upon perpendicular warp and weft and are edge cut (then edge-seamed) in line with the respective thread-directions. Molded, cast or otherwise machined physical objects with rounded corners may be more durable, as stresses no longer concentrate at sharp corners, nor are those corners the natural first points of any impact, although whether this logic applies to a flag highly depends upon whether the halyard is attached to the flag via a heading or by sewn-in grommets (which is usually accounted for by further stitching used at and around the hoist-side's attachment points), as well as how well the fabric used tolerates non-square cutting.
|| Unusual, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary, as some flags do have {{w|List of non-rectangular flags|unorthodox shapes}}.
|-
| EURion anti-counterfeit mark || The "{{w|EURion constellation}}" is a pattern of symbols used as an anti-counterfeiting measure often incorporated in design of a number of secure documents, such as banknotes, checks, and ownership title certificates. Flags are not secure documents and therefore do not require anti-counterfeiting measures. || The purpose of flags is to be seen, and it is usually desirable for them to be easy to replicate - quite unlike this flag! Artistically enough, the anti-counterfeit marks increase the difficulty of copying it.
|-
| Jaunty angle || Implies that the flag is NOT being viewed at an angle, but rather that it is, in fact, a slanted parallelogram in shape (or would be, if not for the rounded corners, moebius band feature and removed strips). This could have some unintended consequences when flown on a pole, although, as a flag is rarely seen perfectly straight (under the varying effects of wind and/or gravity, when raised on a flagpole), this might not be particularly noticeable. || {{w|Flag of Nepal|Nepal's}} flag is notable for being the only non-rectangular national flag. A slightly off-rectangular flag makes things awkward for people drawing or otherwise trying to represent it and, as with the rounded corners, may present construction challenges with some fabrics, without having any particular meaning beyond its 'jauntiness'.
|-
| Tan and white stars on a beige field || Creates obfuscation through very dull colors with bad color contrast, which would be hard to distinguish from far off, defying the point of a flag as an easy-to-recognize symbol of something. This may be a deliberate attempt to avoid offending anyone by inadvertently including colors that have some political or otherwise contested connotation. || Most flags have bold, contrasting colors for easy visibility and replicability.
In traditional heraldic use, there were two categories of "{{w|Tincture (heraldry)|tinctures}}" — namely "metals" (yellow/gold and white/silver) and "colors" (red, blue, green and black, plus "stains", which are treated as colors). Any of these could be used to colour any feature at all, but with the {{w|Rule of tincture|supposed convention}} that metal could not be 'next to' (or overlaid upon) a different metal, nor would there be color-color contrasts. This restriction would usually be officially averted by inlaying a border of the opposite type between two similar ones (or handwaving through it being a {{w|division of the field}}).

This already not-so-strict convention is not necessarily so conspicuously applied to flags themselves, although white (as 'silver') and yellow (as 'gold') is often seen to separate two 'non-metal' colors (see the flags of {{w|Flag of Great Britain|Great Britain}}, {{w|Flag of Belgium|Belgium}} and {{w|Flag of South Africa|South Africa}}; and even only ''slightly'' averted in the {{w|Flag of Brazil}}). {{w|Flag of Vatican City|Even}} {{w|Flag of Bhutan|when}} {{w|Flag of Papua New Guinea|seemingly}} {{w|Flag of Mozambique|outright}} {{w|Flag of Portugal|broken}}, distinctively different hues (or at least intensities) between adjacent regions are usually desirable.

Here, the transitions between the white stars onto the beige ('very light brown') field, from which also arise tan ('almost as light brown') stars, represents such slightness of contrast (especially compared to the (black-bordered) gray motifs, pure black feature-lines/writing and the fully saturated edges of the chromaticity hue-gradient diagram) that it is barely noticeable and does not serve the usual purposes of identifiability and easy recognition which a flag should normally strive towards.
|-
| CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram, to ensure flag color fidelity || A {{w|CIE 1931 color space}} diagram defines the relationship between the visible light spectrum and human color vision. This is probably included as a reference to help address color issues arising from reproducing the flag in a given medium. However, given that all the other items on the flag are tan, white, beige, black or grey, it's unclear how much of a difference this could possibly make.

It may also be referencing the {{w|rainbow flag}} or its many variants known as {{w|pride flag}}s. The original concept was to convey diversity by featuring many stripes of different colors, the most common variant having six of them. However, this version attracted some criticism as suggesting there are only six identities. This sparked creation of many multi-colored pride flags to more thoroughly convey diversity. Including every possible visible color takes this concept to the extreme.
|| Most flags have only a few colors (though less so now that printing is common). Gradients are rare, as they are difficult to replicate, and are often not considered to look good on a flag, especially when flying, rather than represented digitally.

Many flags were traditionally described in written and spoken form, and only acquired exact legal or conventional decisions on the exact colors used for print and screen display in the last 30 years, so would not need to ensure colour fidelity. Including this feature would make such a written description more difficult for this flag.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:[A flag with many things on it.]
:[From left to right, top to bottom, in order labels:]
:[Label:] CIE 1931 Chromaticity Diagram, to ensure flag color fidelity [Icon]
:
:[Label:] We can't agree what animal this is, so we put it on our flag to spark national debate [Icon:] A stylised and basically-drawn outline of a quarupedal creature of some sort; appearing to have a reptilian-like head, a possible hairy back, a tail that that may be feathered and its four otherwise featureless 'legs' being akin to a plesiosaur's flippers.
:
:[Label:] National flag [Icon:] A miniature version of the flag, however it is missing a miniature version of itself.
:
:[Label:] Island (not a specific island, just a tribute to islands in general) [Icon:] A nondescript island shaped blob.
:
:[Label:] Tap here to pay taxes [Icon:] 4 sequential curves, a shape commonly used on NFC scanners to read a credit or debit card to encat payment.
:
:[Label:] Tan and white stars on beige field [Icon:] 32 stars in a rectangle surrounding all the previously mentioned icons, save for the tax payment NFC scanner.
:
:[Label:] Jaunty angle [Icon] Instead of an icon on the flag, the label notes the fact that the flag's left edge is not at a 90 degree angle with the top and bottom edges.
:
:[Label:] Tribute to topology [Icon:] Instead of an icon on the flag, the label notes the fact that the right edge of the flag is separated from the rest of the flag in the middle and twisted one half turn to make the flag into a Möbius strip.
:
:[Label:] Eurion anti-counterfeit mark [Icon:] A set of EURion dots, in the shape of the constellation Orion, commonly used on currency to prevent the use of printers to copy and mass produce counterfeit money.
:
:[Label:] Rounded corners [Icon:] Instead of an icon on the flag, the label notes the fact that the flags corners are rounded.
:
:[Label:] Interested in citizenship? Take one! [Icon:] Instead of a icon on the flag, the label notes the fact that one who wishes to sign up for citizenship of this fictional nation, can tear off a strip and contact the person on it, referencing posters one can find around a residential areas in a similar format. There were originally 14 strips with illegible printing on them, that looks like it might include a phone number with an area code in parentheses; the fourth, ninth, tenth and thirteenth strips, however, have been torn away; while still completely present, the eighth stops short and omits some of the otherwise presumed identical text/telephone number.
:
:[Label:] GDPR consent [Icon:] A menu saying "you have a choice in how we manage your data" with hypothetically intractable buttons saying "ACCEPT" and "CUSTOMIZE" reminiscent of similar menus that appear when you visit a website for the first time, or after you clear your cache.
:
:[Caption below flag:]
:I think our flag design committee really knocked it out of the park.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Graphic designers]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Flags]]

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3250: Flag Design