Vexillology
Vexillology is the study of the history, design, and symbolism of flags. And I unexpectedly got very into it recently. I’ve got a thing for flags now.
I’ve always liked simple but clever, meaningful, and symbolic designs like logos. As I learned about flag design, I found vexillology to be a natural extension of that interest.
Naturally, once I learned some of the basic principles of what makes a good flag, I started designing my own. My first projects were flags for my middle school and high school bands.
My first band was called Sunstone, later renamed to Counterflow because we were awesome at naming things. Our original logo was, of course, a sun. The Counterflow logo was made of black and white arrows facing in opposite directions because I was literal as hell and had no concept of subtlety.
So the flag I designed features a sun and parts of black and white arrows facing opposite directions. The three colored sections of this flag represent the three original members. The yellow represents creativity, the white represents the purity of our early musical exploration, and black represents the darkness of our souls that we channeled into rock and roll.
One thing that makes flags fun is that you get to just decide what everything means after the fact. There are some consistent themes in vexillology, and most countries like to act as if all the colors on their flags are super meaningful. But really, they just make it all up retroactively.
In high school, I was in a band called Double Negative. For that flag, the four colored areas represent the four members of the band and the two negative signs represent, uh, negative signs. The white stands for the unity we had in our playing and improvising because we were a jam band, and the red represents the blood of enemy bands that was shed whenever we performed.
I, for one, would be proud to fly these babies in my front yard. If I had a front yard.
What do you think? Do you want to see more flags from me? Well too bad if you don’t — it’s definitely happening in the future. I’m a vexillololologist now.
