Okay, if you’re unfamiliar with this project, this guy was inspired by a Ted Talk to redesign every state flag in the United States so that they would better flags.







Having a good flag is defined by 5 principles:

1. Keep it simple

2. Use meaningful symbols

3. Use 2 to 3 basic colors

4. No lettering or seals

5. Must be distinctive





Taking all of these into account he produced the bottom image in the OP. As a native Kentuckian myself, however, I wasn’t too thrilled about the design. I’m a sucker for the old flag as abysmally simple and contradictory to the principles of good flag design that it may be, but this new one has grown on me. In fact, I used it as inspiration to create a few designs myself.

This was my first redesign. I wasn’t a huge fan of the horizontal bars as you could probably tell, so I decided to just get rid of them altogether and just center the stars.



I wasn’t a big fan of the blue used as it looked more of a dark green that didn’t sit well at first. So all I did was change the background color from the new blue to the classic color. Something that didn’t stay for long. I kept the goldenrod in the stars because I honestly thought it was a great choice.

This is what came about after I became a little more comfortable with the new blue. I also really liked the bars placed vertically, so I moved them to the sides using the same width as the height when they were placed horizontally. This came about because my first design felt a little too simple and I really enjoyed the idea about the bars representing the “United we stand, divided we fall” motto of Kentucky. I originally wanted to put a few diagonal bars as well to show the “Divided we fall” aspect of the flag, but I decided against it because I felt like I couldn’t conceive a good way to execute it. I may come back to that later.

This came about because of the blue issue again. I also decided to test the stars in a vertical alignment as well and ended up liking it a lot that I used it for a few color tests I did following this. (On a side note: Do you know how hard it is to rotate 15 stars individually and then align them? Very, if you don’t realize there are a few shortcuts you can use to simplify the process.)

This is the same design, but instead of using any of the blues I decided to use the green from the olive branches from the current Kentucky flag. In all honest, I’m not a big fan of this design, but I do find it’s a tad easier on the eyes than the original Kentucky navy.

This is another recolor of my second flag where I attempted to make a flag with all three colors I’d used previously and ended up creating a monstrosity.

Eventually I figured that the bars being divided, yet still standing like they were, wasn’t a good representation of “United We Stand.” Therefore, I brought them back together and moved the stars to the left and enlarged them in order for them to take more advantage of filling the negative space. I also reinstated the original redesign colors as they were really good choices I finally realized.

This is my final design at the moment. As someone that ins’t a big fan of negative space I decided to just stop with the vertical stars and use the ones from the original redesign. It ended up not being that different, but, oh well.