What's wrong with our state flag?
In flag design parlance, New Hampshire is one of 20+ states whose flags are considered 'SOB's: seals on bedsheets.
Up close, our seal is a work of art, inspiring and historically significant. However, on a flag, the lazy copy-and-paste of the seal is a colossal design failure.
​
It looks great when you have time to admire it at close range, but is completely illegible and indistinguishable when flapping on a 25- or 50-foot pole.
​
In late 2018 I spotted our state's flag flying upside-down in Hooksett. Believe it or not, this was the second time I've seen this!
This is a more realistic-sized view of our flag "in the wild". Not only is it impossible to make out details, it is indistinguishable from the flags of over a dozen other states...
So what's the solution?
Despite a collective cringe when design-savvy individuals see a seal-on-a-bedsheet flapping in New Hampshire's skies, I've lived in this most stubborn of states for nearly 35 years, and I'm a realist. The NH flag will never change. The reason given by ardent supporters of keeping it would be "there's nothing wrong with it" or "that's the way it's always been". Or, one of my favorite cop-outs, "aren't there more important issues we should be working on?" As if 1.3 million people need to drop everything to work solely on the flag. Give me a break.
​
In any case, have I attempted to design a new NH flag, just for fun, you might ask? The answer is yes. I attempted to capture the spirit of NH's lakes and mountains, and it looked like this:
However, a couple years back I came across this redesign, called "Granite Banner". The more I read the designer's description, the more I came to admire the amount of symbolism packed into such a simple design. In my humble opinion, THIS is what New Hampshire's flag should look like:
If it ever came down to it, I would wholeheartedly support this redesign. Check out its many meanings here.