The coolest flags in the world, and what makes them stand out

The coolest flags in the world are almost always the ones that do something no other flag does. A dragon. A rifle. A shape that is not even a rectangle. Below is a run through the coolest country flags, the coolest state flags, and a few cool flags from history, plus a short note on which of them hold up as design. If you want the theory first, the five rules for good flag design cover the ground this list skips.

The coolest national flags in the world

Nepal is the usual first pick, and it earns it. Nepal flies the only national flag that is not a rectangle or a square: two stacked pennant shapes, crimson with a blue border, carrying a white sun and a white crescent moon. Nothing else on a flagpole looks remotely like it.

Bhutan runs close. A white dragon with its claws full of jewels stretches across a diagonal split of orange and yellow. The dragon is drawn with real detail, which breaks the usual advice about keeping things simple, and it still works.

Mozambique is the one people argue over. Its flag carries a rifle with a bayonet crossed with a hoe, sitting on an open book under a yellow star. It is the only current national flag with a modern firearm on it.

Kiribati takes a whole coat of arms and turns it into the flag: a gold frigatebird flying over a rising sun, above three white wavy bands on blue. Papua New Guinea splits its field corner to corner, red over black, with the Southern Cross on one half and a bird of paradise on the other.

Wales is not a sovereign state flag, but the red dragon on green and white lands on every short list. Also worth your time: Albania’s black double-headed eagle, Sri Lanka’s lion holding a sword, Mexico’s eagle fighting a snake on a cactus, and Belize, often called the only national flag with people on it.

Flags with animals and creatures

An animal gives a flag a face, and faces stick in memory. The animal sits on the flag as its charge, the main symbol placed on the plain background.

The strongest animal flags keep the creature big and simple in outline. Uganda uses a grey crowned crane standing in a white circle. Zambia puts an eagle in the top fly corner, off to one side, which is unusual and looks great. Ecuador’s condor spreads its wings over the national arms. Dominica’s sisserou parrot brings purple onto the field, a color almost no other national flag uses.

Mythical animals do even better than real ones, because nobody can argue about the pose. Bhutan’s dragon and the Welsh dragon are both instantly readable at a distance.

Odd shapes and unusual layouts

Shapes that are not rectangles

Nepal aside, Switzerland and Vatican City both fly square flags, which looks strange next to a row of normal ones. The list of countries with square flags is short. Ohio is the only US state flag that is not a rectangle. It is a swallowtail burgee with a notch cut into the fly end.

Layouts that cut across the field

Most flags are stripes. The cool ones usually are not. Tanzania, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all run a band diagonally from corner to corner. South Africa uses a horizontal Y that splits the field into five shapes. Seychelles fans five rays out from the bottom hoist corner. Qatar and Bahrain divide their fields with a zigzag line instead of a straight one.

The Philippines does something no other flag does. Its blue band sits on top in peacetime and the red band goes on top in war, so the same flag carries two meanings.

The coolest US state flags

Maryland is the standout. It takes two family patterns from English heraldry and quarters them, black and gold against red and white, with no attempt to look like a normal flag. It is a coat of arms in cloth form and it works.

New Mexico puts a red Zia sun on a yellow field, two colors and one symbol. Alaska’s Big Dipper and North Star came out of a contest for schoolchildren and beats most of what professionals have produced since. Arizona uses thirteen red and yellow rays with a copper star in the middle. Colorado, Tennessee and South Carolina all pass the same test: you could draw them from memory after one look.

Cool flags from history

Siam flew a white elephant on a plain red field, which is about as striking as a two-element flag can get. Qing China used a blue dragon chasing a red pearl on yellow. Spain and its empire carried the Cross of Burgundy, a red diagonal cross drawn as two ragged, knotted branches. The Kingdom of Hawaii combined a Union Jack with eight stripes, and that flag still flies as the state flag today.

Then there is the opposite extreme. Libya once flew a flag that was a plain green rectangle with no symbol, no stripe and no star. Pirate flags belong here too, since a skull on black needs no explanation in any language.

What makes a flag cool, and still good design

Cool and good overlap more than you would expect. Nearly every flag above holds one idea, uses two or three colors, and reads from far away. That is most of what makes a good flag in the first place. The color choices usually carry meaning as well, and what the colors stand for is part of why these designs feel earned rather than decorative.

Where cool goes wrong is detail. A full state seal, small lettering, or six colors that turn to grey mush at fifty feet. If you want the side by side comparison, see best and worst flag designs.

So copy the habit, not the picture. Pick one symbol nobody else has used, give it room, and let the background stay plain.

Design your own cool flag

You can build any of these ideas in Flag Maker, the free flag design editor on the home page. Start with a plain field, add one charge, hold yourself to three colors, then shrink the preview to a thumbnail and see whether it still reads.