How to design a flag: 5 rules for good flag design

The most widely used advice on how to design a flag comes from a short booklet called “Good Flag, Bad Flag”, compiled by Ted Kaye for the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA). It boils good flag design down to five principles:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Use meaningful symbolism.
3. Use two or three basic colors.
4. No lettering or seals.
5. Be distinctive or be related.

The booklet itself calls these guidelines, not rules, and says you can depart from them “with caution and purpose.” Still, most flags that people remember follow all five. This guide goes through each one with real examples, then shows how to put a design together in the flag maker.

Why flags need their own rules

A logo sits still on a page. A flag doesn’t. NAVA’s booklet puts it plainly: flags flap, flags drape, and they have to be seen from a distance and from their back side. A flag also gets made in sizes from a lapel pin to a football field. Anything that only works up close, in perfect light, on one side, will fail on a pole.

Keep that picture in mind as you design: a piece of cloth 50 feet away, half folded by the wind, seen from behind.

1. Keep it simple

NAVA’s test is that the flag “should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory.” Simple designs also cost less to make, which matters if you want lots of copies.

Bangladesh is the booklet’s good example: a green field with one red disc, set slightly toward the hoist. Two colors, one symbol, and you could sketch it on a napkin. The bad examples include old flags packed with stars, crescents and swords, where the detail cancels itself out.

A practical check: shrink your design to the size of a postage stamp. If you can still tell what it is, you’re in good shape.

2. Use meaningful symbolism

The images, colors or patterns should relate to whatever the flag stands for. NAVA notes that symbolism can live in the main symbol (the charge), in the colors, or in the layout itself.

Alaska’s state flag is a nice example. Its stars form the Big Dipper and the North Star, a fitting image for the northernmost US state. Italy’s vertical stripes carried a message too: the booklet points out that the vertical tricolor, based on the revolutionary flag of France, was a challenge to the horizontal stripes used by the ruling kingdoms of Europe.

Pick one main symbol. The booklet warns against trying to include “a symbol for everybody,” and says stylized or silhouette shapes usually work better than realistic pictures.

3. Use two or three basic colors

NAVA lists the basic flag colors as red, blue, green, black, yellow and white. Limit yourself to three of them, and make sure they contrast. A useful habit from the booklet is to separate dark colors with a light one, and light colors with a dark one. A good flag should still read in grayscale.

There’s a cost reason as well: flag fabric comes in a limited range of colors, so a design with eight shades is harder and more expensive to produce. For more on what colors tend to stand for, see flag colors and their meaning.

4. No lettering or seals

This is the rule people most want to break. NAVA’s argument against it is hard to beat: “why not just write ‘U.S.A.’ on a flag?” A flag is a graphic symbol. Lettering is nearly impossible to read from a distance and hard to sew, and on a one-layer flag the words read backwards from the other side.

Seals have the same problem. They were made to be read up close on paper. The booklet’s suggestion is to lift one element from the seal and use that as the symbol. South Carolina’s flag does this with its palmetto tree and crescent, and it’s far more recognizable than a seal would be.

5. Be distinctive or be related

Avoid copying another flag, but borrow on purpose when you want to show a connection. NAVA calls this the hardest principle because it requires knowing other flags.

Indonesia and Monaco show the problem: apart from their proportions, the two flags are the same red over white, and the booklet notes there’s no connection between the countries. Ghana shows the other side. It uses colors shared by many West African flags, which signals a link with its neighbors.

Before you settle on a design, search for it. If your flag looks like an existing one, change a color or the layout until it stands apart.

Shape, proportions and other details

NAVA’s “other considerations” page adds a few practical points:

• Rectangles are standard. Keep the height to length ratio between 1:1.5 and 1:2 unless another shape means something.
• The upper hoist corner, the canton, is the place of honor. It’s the part you still see when the flag hangs limp.
• Avoid putting important detail at the fly end. That edge wears out first and gets hemmed back.
• Swallowtail shapes fray more easily, and curved lines add cost to sewn flags.

The flag ratios guide lists the proportions countries actually use, and parts of a flag explains terms like hoist, fly and field.

How to design a flag in Flag Maker, step by step

You can build a flag that follows all five principles in a few minutes in the free flag maker. Nothing to install and no account needed.

1. Pick the shape. Use the proportions menu in the top bar. 2:3 is the most common shape for national flags; 3:5 and 1:2 are good alternatives.
2. Choose a layout. The Layouts tab has starting patterns such as two or three bands, a Nordic cross, a saltire, a canton, a hoist triangle and a border. Click any band or stripe to change its color.
3. Add one symbol. Open Symbols for stars, suns, moons, crowns, animals, plants and tools, or Shapes for stars, circles, crescents and crosses. NAVA notes that the center, or just left of center, is the most visible spot on a flying flag.
4. Check your colors. Count them. If you have more than three, cut one. Make sure light sits next to dark.
5. Test it small. Walk a few steps back from your screen, or download a small PNG and look at it at actual size. If it still reads, it will work on a pole.
6. Save and download. Save keeps the design in My flags in your browser. Download gives you a PNG, JPG or SVG.

The editor does have a Text tab, which is handy for mockups, team banners or a caption on a poster. For the flag itself, the advice above stands: let a symbol do the talking.

A quick checklist

Question	Good sign
Could a child draw it from memory?	One main symbol, large shapes
Do the parts mean something?	You can explain each color and symbol in a sentence
How many colors?	Two or three, with light next to dark
Any words or seals?	None
Does it look like another flag?	Not unless you meant it to

If you’re designing for a made-up nation, the fictional country flag guide applies these same ideas to worldbuilding, and there’s a short answer for fictional country flags too. And if you want a quick answer to share, the FAQ has a short version of what makes a good flag.