Hey guys! I’m in the midst of making up my country’s wiki. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations on what program to use to make my national flag. Also, what do you think about my country’s storyline thus far?
Thanks!
OpenGeofiction
Discussion
Comment from UltraWorlds on 10 December 2016 at 07:16
I think for making a flag it’ll be useful to use flag softwares. I personally use FlagMaker, and it’s so easy to master, easier than making your first 1,000 population town on OGF.
In Nationalities, you wrote ʃarlottean (93%), Commonian (57%). It’s impossible, since it’ll be a total of 150%. History is also nice, but one thing I have to say, is remove trivia. OGF Wiki is based on Wikipedia, rather than wikia.
Comment from Interstate_85 on 10 December 2016 at 07:27
Alright, thanks! Also, the idea with the population is that they overlap (many ʃarlotteans are also former Commonian citizens. I wasn’t too sure how to explain it.
Comment from Pawl on 10 December 2016 at 09:20
For flags I use Inkscape. If you’re not used to producing flags, I would strongly recommend reading Isleño’s page on making realistic flags. Bold colours, simple design and good contrast produce the best and most realistic flags (and no writing!). I’m happy to help with flag design : vexillology is one of my other interests.
Generally, I think you’re off to a good start! A couple of comments:-
If your language is Ingerish (English), I’m wondering about your use of the long s (“ʃ”) for “ch”. It looks odd to me : isn’t ʃ just a graphical variant of S?
Even allowing for the need for strong defence, I wonder whether your 150 military personnel per thousand population is a bit high. It’s bigger than every real world country except North Korea, which is a highly militarized dictatorship.
As UltraWorlds says, the wiki should look like Wikipedia, so something like the personal details of Jack O’Neill should be expanded and put in his own biography page. If you just want to keep note of them until you write the biography, you could put them on a talk/sandbox page.
Comment from EMKLI on 10 December 2016 at 12:05
I guess any simple paint program like Pinta or Paint.net etc. will do the job, as long as you stick to the “plain stripes, nothing else” scheme. When stars or diagonal forms so come into play, I suggest a vector based drawing program like Inkscape. I used Inkscape for my flags of Norðurland and it’s provinces. Stars are dead simply to create with it and you can easily layout a grid of guides for the sections of your flag. Really easy to work with, no hard learning curve on that level (I’m by far not an Inkscape expert myself).
Comment from Interstate_85 on 11 December 2016 at 01:35
It looks like I’ll have to try Inkscape. None of the other ones I’ve found can do what I want:
11, 13, or 15 red & white horizontal stripes Blue field in the upper-left corner with a single large white star.
I can’t find anything that lets me change the number of stripes.
Also, I’ve made the armed forces smaller and more realistic.
Thanks!
Comment from Pawl on 11 December 2016 at 07:43
11 red and white stripes and a white 5-pointed star on a blue canton is the real-world flag of Liberia, so I wouldn’t go for 11 stripes (but I guess that depends on how many boroughs you have - could it be an even number?), and perhaps have a different number of points on the star.
Do you want the upper-left canton to be square (like Liberia) or rectangular (like the USA)?
If you don’t want to learn Inkscape at the moment, I would be happy to draw the flag for you.
Comment from isleño on 11 December 2016 at 08:18
I’d go a step further and say that the whole red-and-white-horizontal-stripes-with-a-blue-field-in-the-upper-left layout is too close to USA/Liberia/Malaysia, especially since this flag will be most often viewed as a thumbnail in wiki lists, etc. Ideally a design should look distinct and unique even at a tiny size.
Pawl’s flags are some of the best around here — he can probably suggest some great ideas.
Comment from Interstate_85 on 14 December 2016 at 03:18
Yeah I know about Liberia. I decided not to use 11 stripes anyway, as I think I will need more boroughs. I just really like the red white and blue stripe look. There don’t seem to be any like it in our world. I made a preliminary one with a square canton and 15 red and white stripes. I could end up at least changing the shape of the star. Right now, it’s just the standard five-point star. It’s still a work in progress.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Comment from isleño on 14 December 2016 at 22:39
Point 1 of our flag tutorial is “originality,” so we’d expect the flag to be different enough to feel original, not just a slightly modified version of Liberia or the US. It’s also important that we set a good example for future users. Check out Andy’s Ingerland flag, which feels British but looks distinctly different from the UK flag; or Sarepava’s Karolia flag, which feels Scandinavian but can’t be confused with any real country. In the same way, it’s easy to give a flag an ‘American’ sort of feel without copying it quite so closely. Dozens of examples here. Good luck with it.
Comment from Interstate_85 on 14 December 2016 at 23:51
I had an idea today. Perhaps instead of a canton in the upper left, I could have a band of blue across the whole left side of the flag. It would look like Texas’ or North Carolina’s blue stripe, but with way more red and white stripes. Then I’d have a star or something inside it. Thoughts?
Thanks!
Comment from isleño on 15 December 2016 at 17:03
@Interstate_85: Yeah, I think that would probably be different enough to seem original.