A state panel says Minnesota’s new state flag should feature an eight-pointed North Star against a dark blue background shaped like the state, with a solid light blue field at the right.
Minnesota’s new state flag should feature an eight-pointed North Star against a dark blue background shaped like the state, with a solid light blue field at the right, a special commission decided Tuesday as it picked a replacement for an older design that many Native Americans considered offensive.
The State Emblems Redesign Commission chose the final version on an 11-1 vote after finalizing a new state seal that depicts a loon, the state bird. Unless the Legislature rejects them, the new flag and seal will automatically become official April 1, 2024, when Minnesota observes Statehood Day.
The star echoes Minnesota’s state motto of “Star of the North.” The commission’s chairman, Luis Fitch, said that to him, the light blue represents the Mississippi River, “the most important river in the United States,” pointing to the North Star. But he acknowledged it could mean other things to other people. Symmetry and simplicity won out over other versions, including ones that included a green stripe for the state’s agricultural heritage.
I agree. I do like the tri color and would have been happy with it, but there’s a quote from whom I cannot remember that essentially is “flag design is finding the perfect flag and then dialing it down a notch”. And to that end, I think it succeeds wonderfully.
It’s modern but classic. Detailed but not busy. Inclusive but not all-encompassing. It’s pretty amazing.
I am glad they changed the star design; I think the new one is much better.
I like that they went with the simplified "K" shape for Minnesota (the reverse triangle is really clever visually) but I did also like the more colorful version better. Just a little too plain now for me.
Don't worry, Republican legislators are already in frothing rage about the change. I'm sure it has nothing to do with them wanting to keep the problematic imagery in the current one of native Americans being driven off their land. /s
Also they're spreading some conspiracy theory the new flag is supposed to look like the flag of Somalia or something and that this is a prelude to Sharia law being imposed. I wish I was joking. Yeah, because it has blue colors and a star in it, it must be an homage to Somalia, couldn't have anything to do with being the "land of 10,000 lakes" and "the north star state." Or even the old flag, which get this, is blue with a big star in it.
I also liked the version with the stripes better, but this is very nice too, and anything is better than the atrocious current one. The new seal with the loon is very nice too.
Other states that just lazily slapped their seals on to a blue background take note and get to fixing them up please.
No that was the tricolor variation that preceded this final design, and it actually did look like a Somalia flag. I think this one will be pretty well liked by pretty much everyone. The only people who won't like it will instinctively not like it because of the taint of wokeness as a motive to change it. Whatever. But at the end of the day, it was a trash flag and everyone will ultimately agree that it's better now.
Cool. Now he should bring back HI instead of leaving its Patreon up for three years. I don’t care that it only collected money when episodes released, the optics of it matter.
As a general rule you should be able to roughly represent the flag in 10 seconds in MS paint using only the pencil tool. If you can't, it's a bad flag.
This flag you can do that the old one with the seal is terrible and you definitely couldn't because it looks like every other terrible state flag, with a seal.
We'll be trying to get our hands on a nice flag with the original design#1953 on it to fly outside our house. This one is fine I guess, but it stings with what could have been.
Cool flag. I like the solid light blue over the stripes that were an option, K.I.S.S..
Feel like with that simplified they could have done something with color a little more interesting than the dark blue to really emphasize the shape of that dark blue region but if you can't give this a 10/10 your standards are too high.
I liked the tri-color design, but this one is good too, like you said simplicity is best. The dark blue in the K shape is shaped like the state, so the solid color fits.
In my opinion Mew Mexico and Arizona are both better. I hope this encourages more states that are just "blue field with state seal" to make better flags. New York really needs help 😅
The new one suffers from aluminimalism whereas the old one looks like something my mom would stick to the fridge with magnets to show how proud she was of my work in fifth grade that I spent all Thanksgiving afternoon working on by myself.
Many flags are just three color stripes, like France, Germany, and Italy off the top of my head. This has more detail than that without being too complicated due to the angled shape.
The two shades of blue do suck though, a different color for contrast would help immensely,.