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The International Flag of Planet Earth
- jpeg_hero 11y agoLooks ugly.
- douche 11y agoThat was my knee-jerk reaction, as well. Sort of a less interesting variation on the Olympic flag. Now this, this has pizzazz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_in_Futurama#/media/File:Futurama_flag_of_Earth.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_in_Futurama#/media/Fi... /s
- MikeTaylor 11y agoYeah, the Futurama one is just fine if you subscribe to American Exceptionalism. Which would suit 4.48% of the world population just fine.
- azeirah 11y ago...
- grhmc 11y agoI would like to hang this flag outside my home.
- bandicity 11y agoMy ideal Earth flag: a blue marble on white or black background.
- dakridge 11y agoThis one is still my favorite: http://imgur.com/gallery/7ze3a http://imgur.com/gallery/7ze3a
- INTPenis 11y agoOnce we do colonize the solar system I'm sure invidual moons of giant planets will play a larger role than the actual planets. So I don't see this working in the future. The only future we can truly expect, aside from total annihilation and reset of the planet, would be a total colonization of the solar system.
- SwellJoe 11y agoBut, if it is to be a "flag for planet earth", it would not need encompass colonies on other worlds, and it wouldn't be the goal of such a flag to do so. If, as someone else suggested, the right idea is a flag for humanity, then your argument works.
- ajmurmann 11y agoIt's still where we as mankind originated and seems somewhat appropriate. However, maybe that's short sighted and we will get a very anti-earth separatist movement from the colonies.
- yc1010 11y agoWhy not? if Mars is colonized then there be 2 white dots on this flag (not sure why the moon is white) It looks quite good actually
- MikeTaylor 11y agoNeeds to have Pluto knocked out :-)
- dakridge 11y agoNeil?
- dognotdog 11y agoThat one is a lot more interesting, though it's basically just a map, which is atypical for flags. The OP's flag is very abstract. Presumably, any other alien race also strives for unity and lives. It's hard to create a better flag without actually knowing aliens and having some idea of commonalities and differences with humanity. Indeed, maybe we need a flag for humanity, not planet earth?
- moron4hire 11y agoWow. Who would have thought it'd be a bunch of overlapping rings? I'm completely surprised.
- latenightcoding 11y ago10/10 photoshop skills
- 4684499 11y agoRemind me of this: https://i.imgur.com/mkyyF9A.png https://i.imgur.com/mkyyF9A.png
- sandworm101 11y agoTwo things: 1) Blue and white aren't exactly politically neutral. They tried to give Iraq a blue and white flag, with blue stripes representing the rivers. It did not go well. 2) A flag should not be so complex that children cannot draw it with crayons. The interlocking rings are nice, but the specificity of which goes under which makes things too difficult. The union jack is perfect example of this complexity but at least there is was the result of various mergers.
- JD557 11y agoI completely agree with your second point. Being able to easily draw a flag is a really nice indicator of how nice your flag is (eg. is it too complex? Does it scale well?). Look at the image posted by dakridge: https://imgur.com/gallery/7ze3a https://imgur.com/gallery/7ze3a Anyone could easily draw that, and that makes it much better than OP's flag.
- sandworm101 11y agoYa, but its a little dated now. Any reference to the number of planets cannot survive the next upstart science teacher pushing out a new definition to get himself on the daily show.
- ajmurmann 11y agoAre you referring to Pluto losing its status as a Planet? That was a complicated process that was based on new discoveries and not some idea by some "upstart science teacher" on the daily show. Keeping Pluto as a planet would have made our definition of planet very wide and to be consistent Ceres should have to be turned back into a planet as well.
- eridius 11y agoPoint 2 is a reasonable concern, but in this case, I think it's fine. If a child draws interlocking rings with a crayon, it's impossible to tell which ring is on top. So children can draw this without a problem, they just draw each circle in whatever order they want and it will look fine. The ordering concerns only come into play when using a medium that can represent which ring is on top at each crossing.
- 3pt14159 11y agoIt's an interesting start, but the balance feels a bit off. A bit too yonic in the center and the way the rings overlap with negative space makes it look worse at small sizes. Realistically speaking a flag is in many ways the way you are different from other flags but this raises the question: Who is looking at the flag of Earth? Who does the flag not represent? In the short term I'd argue it's Venusians or Lunarian settlers. To them a flag that represents origins is more important. I like the idea of a blue background symbolizing water / the earth sky, and the primary molecule that makes up our actual tissue, but the symbol in the middle shouldn't be based on circles. All planetary life would want to use a circle. Especially as the flag for the first planet that humans arise from, it's weak. In the long term the symbol for Earthlings may even be observed by aliens. In what ways will we be different from them? The flag may even be used as a symbol for other Earth species like Dolphins once we get the technology to communicate with them effectively or to artificially increase their intelligence.
- mtrn 11y agoI expected a blue disk on a black ground.
- mahouse 11y ago"The International Flag of Planet Earth" [hero image of a black woman on an astronaut suit] definitely not trying to push an agenda, folks
- kelvin0 11y agoUh oh, world flag? What`s next a universal P2P crypto currency to be used across nations...? Smells like NWO reptilian agenda is advancing :-) Seriously though, this is really nice initiative.
- kelvin0 11y agoHN, where's your sense of humor? :)
- athenot 11y agoFor the purpose of human unity, this is a great idea. As globalization progresses, rallying behind divisive banners may become less and less relevant (or they may shift to non territorial notions, but that's a whole different story). But why overthink the symbolism? We already have the globe outline [1] as a relatively well understood symbol. [1] Unicode U+1F310
- pla3rhat3r 11y agoCouldn't we just use the flag Daffy Duck used!?! http://www.gargaro.com/webpages/general/marvin17.jpg http://www.gargaro.com/webpages/general/marvin17.jpg
- TeMPOraL 11y agoYeah, I'd say acceptable, and I could get used to it with time. But honestly, it seems to me that every time someone makes a flag for a real-world thing, it almost always suck. Why can't they just hire Michael Okuda, whose work in Star Trek (and NASA) produced really pretty logos and flags? http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/2009/06/image-9afc0d4cddf311dc.jpg http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/2009/06/image-9a... https://startreklives.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/emblem.gif https://startreklives.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/emblem.gif -- Still, I'm willing to wield current design because solidarity as a species means more to me than petty design issues :).
- jff 11y agoThose are all either 1) a derivation of the general "starfleet arrowhead" or 2) a ripoff of the UN flag. Most of them are also afflicted with awful outdated-looking gradients.
- c22 11y agoI'm not sure if "ripoff" is the best way to think of those designs. They were likely conciously constructed with those elements with the intent of portraying a believable future descended from our present.
- kamac 11y ago> Why can't they just hire Michael Okuda, whose work in Star Trek (and NASA) produced really pretty logos and flags? Flags are supposed to be simple, and Michael Okuda's work has too many details.
- 31reasons 11y agoIt looks like a logo of some bank.
- billpg 11y agoI prefer this one... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Terra_flag.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Terra_flag.gif Aqua, terra, aer et somniorum.
- dankohn1 11y agoI hope by the time this flag is used, space suits don't have to be that bulky.
- billpg 11y agoI think anything with five or more interlocked rings are illegal in any country that wants to ever host the Ol*mpics. I seem to recall a game (or something) that had a similar logo to this flag but had to be redesigned.
- billpg 11y agoFound it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Five_Rings#International_Olympic_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Five_Rings#Inter...
- acmecorps 11y agoIt needs more.. pop? ;) Joking aside, I kinda dig it.
- enlightenedfool 11y agoPure utopia man. But, we could make a first step by helping the refugees from middle east and people of downtrodden African nations.
- chasing 11y agoAs with these sorts of things, I respect the academic exercise, but they always feel really arbitrary. Like, I could pick fifty different decent symbols and color schemes and come up with something that kind of looked good and might be a good Earth flag in a movie or something. If that's the goal, then the challenge isn't really that hard. If you really wanted to explore a flag for Earth, you'd engage people from around the world. What symbols are important to them? What colors? How do they want to be seen? What does it even mean to them to have a flag that represents Earth as something uniquely ours? And such. Then begin to distill these ideas down into a flag. Or try to create a process by which an idea could be brought about. And try to get buy-in from all of these diverse people. That's the hard part. The interesting part! (Also, nitpick about the video: 5:8 != the Golden Ratio.)
- alyx 11y agoThat would lead to analysis-paralysis pretty quickly. Just saying.
- scott_karana 11y agoIsn't that sort of the point? "Make a static, single, identifiable representation of a massive, diverse, scattered, irregularly sparse time-malleable dataset"
- rndn 11y agoAnd that's the fundamental flaw of human nature that prevents collaboration at a large scale: Everything needs a story, a hero and a name. That that slows decision processes down almost to stagnation, and it often results in decisions that aren't based on reason, but on names, heroes and stories. To some extent reputation is certainly a useful heuristic, but at some point everybody has to accept that they are only bags of cells that have to execute the most rational action sequences in order to survive. In that sense I would actually be in favor of a simplistic Earth flag design. We'll likely have to remove any memetic baggage from our decision making in order to survive.
- kdavis 11y agoIf you read until the page's end, you'll see this is an undergrad school project. So, I'd guess bringing all the world's nations to consensus was out of scope. That said, they did a wonderful job, and, as indicated by the fact this is on the front page, they have captured a world wide consensus of sorts.
- jws 11y agoGreat, give us an Earth flag and we can go stick it in things and claim them! Then we can explain to the local inhabitants how that has changed their situation. We'll need pamphlets in a universal language too.
- notNow 11y agoDon't we have the Olympic flag already?
- fizixer 11y agoYet another possibility is to use UN flag as representing earth? Also any "planetary" space program, as opposed to country specific programs like NASA for US, JAXA for Japan etc, can be under some newly created body, like "UN space program" or something.
- ciupicri 11y agoI thought of the same thing. Aren't the United Nations supposed to represent us all on several issues? Though even if there is a maritime organization, there's nothing regarding space and its exploration. I guess it's time to bring in more bureaucrats :-)
- hguant 11y agoThere are a large number of political and practical reasons why the U.N. flag isn't going to be used to represent earth, the biggest one being that few nations would say the U.N. as a body represents anythijg more than the interests of the five permanent members of the security council. Add on the fact that the organization as a whole is bloated and encumbered by institutional dogfighting that would put Microsoft to shame, I don't see any UN funded/backed/approved space ventures happening anytime soon. Theres a reason the ISS isn't under a UN flag.
- maus42 11y agoCan you imagine why and how any of those powers -- or any of the others -- would agree to anything else? If the security council can agree on a policy how to represent Earth, they have armed might to back it up. If they do not, all the bets are off, but I suspect that most of the powers and many smaller countries would do their utmost to fight down any independent movement claiming to represent the Earth their governments do not approve of. The UN is a bloated thing of corruption, but so is most of all of the organized humanity on any scale, so that's quite fitting. Most of our existing international operational frameworks both de jure and de facto are coordinated under the UN or very related organizations. Assuming the world will resemble the one we live in now, if a need to represent the Earth arises (like, say, alien contact) and if everyone who matters agrees how to deal with the aliens, they'll probably just stick the UN sticker on that decision. If they do not, sucks for us. If someone not-UN will start their space adventure to find aliens, they'll use their own nationalist / corporate / ideological symbolism. If they in addition claim to represent the Earth or the Humanity instead of just themselves without everyone's approval (can't see that happening, I doubt the permanent members would agree precisely because the reasons you outlined), they will probably have a war at their hands at home. In that case and without drastic changes in the international political reality, I'd wager that the ones who can make their claim to stick would be the UN permanent council members, because that's how they got in there in the first place.
- AYBABTME 11y agoThe rings are not interleaved consistently, which is annoying me because there's no explanation as to why. The middle ring is on top of all the rings, but the two bottom ones. The right-most ring crosses its neighbours from under, instead of in an interleaved under/over like the other rings. The top-left ring crosses its neighbours from over, in the same fashion. The other 4 outer rings are (clockwise) over their precedent, then under their following ring. I'm curious if it's on purpose. If it's not on purpose, then I'm a bit disappointed that something so obvious wasn't found, when the rest of the presentation and discourses suggest great consideration. If it is indeed on purpose, then I don't understand why it's not explained, and why they made the top-left, right most and center rings different from the other ones. Anyways, in other cases I'd say I'm nitpicking a whole lot. But this is a flag design, their text appeals to great consideration for the craft of designing flags. I'm a noob and I can notice the inconsistency, so I'm perplexed.
- eridius 11y agoI'm guessing this is because if it were interleaved consistently, then it couldn't possibly be constructed in 3D space.
- afterburner 11y agoTry it your way. Maybe it looks more boring?
- huhtenberg 11y agotl;dr - a self-promo piece by Oskar Pernefeldt, whoever this guy is.
- reikonomusha 11y agoIt was a school project.
- monochromatic 11y agoThis is a silly project that solves a problem no one has. When we encounter aliens, it'll maybe make sense to have some designation for humans/earth as a whole. In the meantime though, it's completely meaningless. And the flag itself is... ok I guess, but there are a million designs that would be equally acceptable. I just don't get the point.
- ywecur 11y agoI'd say it creates a sense of unity with those that travel into outer space.
- henriquemaia 11y agoI concur. When I see some spacecraft bearing the flag of one particular country, I feel something is missing, for I myself also feel part of quest for a greater understanding of our boundaries with outer space. A flag of the earth would create that sense of unity you referred to.
- yitchelle 11y agoInteresting last picture where there is a row of the American flags and then a lonely Earth Flag. I would have though it would be Swedish flags as this project is from a design college in Stockholm.
- pluma 11y agoFew other countries love displaying their flag as much as the US (plus a lot of stock photography just happens to come from the US), so I'd wager it's the easiest place to find stock photography to put the flag in.
- calimac 11y agoThe flag represents nothing. Humanity is divided.
- teddyh 11y agoHaving a flag for planet Earth is an oxymoron. The very purpose of a flag, and nationalism in general, is to be a symbol of a nation, and the very concept of a nation can only exist in contrast to other nations. One side of the coin can only exist because there is another side. All of Earth, considered as a whole, has nothing to compare itself to. We call the sides of a coin “heads” and “tails”, but we don’t have a word for the “side” of a sphere, since it would be pointless. (Incidentally, there are already a few symbols for the planet Earth: Unicode 2637;TRIGRAM FOR EARTH¹ and Unicode 2641;EARTH²) That said, there may be a need for a slightly related symbol: In the world today there is a common assumption of nationalism, so whenever some grand achievement is done, there is the assumption that it is done in the name of some country or other, and everything is done with a place reserved for a symbol for that country – commonly a flag or a heraldric shield. To contrast against this, we may need a symbol against nationalism. ① http://graphemica.com/%E2%98%B7 http://graphemica.com/%E2%98%B7 ② http://graphemica.com/%E2%99%81 http://graphemica.com/%E2%99%81
- exodust 11y agoI'm not so sure. All sorts of things appear on flags that aren't to do with nationalism. You can put a smiley face on a flag if you wanted to, and hoist it above your outhouse. You can put a skull and cross bones on a flag and put it over your DJ mixing desk. There probably is intelligent life out there. If we meet them one day, and they have a flag representing their planet. "Hi Earthlings, you don't have a flag?"...awkward.
- anon8764 11y ago> All of Earth, considered as a whole, has nothing to compare itself to. Except other planets.
- teddyh 11y agoAs I said, Earth-the-planet already has perfectly good symbols. And, as dietrichepp already said, planting the Flag of the planet Earth on Mars just seems weird, so I don’t think the symbol was intended to symbolize Earth as a planet, but rather Earth as “where all the people are”.
- kzrdude 11y agoouter space is not the right term to describe low earth orbit. It's the nearest space there is, and if you're there, you're strongly gravitationally bound to the earth itself.
- rckrd 11y agoWhat will the favicon look like?
- databit 11y agoWhy not use the Olympic flag. Isn't that the purpose of the Olympic Games? To unite humanity?
- teddyh 11y agoIf you read up on the actual Olympic Games and the Olympic Committee, you could get the impression that their purpose is to unite humanity against the Olympic Committe.
- pluma 11y agoWell, common enemies tend to be the best bonding agent in any given situation, so I propose the following: Azure, the Olympic symbol argent. Motto: "Fuck the International Olympic Committee!".
- paulrademacher 11y agoHere is a much better proposal, with the added benefit of keeping our planet safe: http://traipse.com/upgrade/ http://traipse.com/upgrade/
- alanh 11y agoThis was quite unexpected and has brightened my day
- exodust 11y agoWithout javascript, this page renders as empty white space. I suppose it is made up of complicated things like text and images, so maybe an unfair observation. Anyway, the flag. Sure, make an Earth flag, good idea. But I think it should look better than a few interlocking circles. Needs a bit more spice or something. Let's call the 7 circles version 0.1. Looking forward to version 0.2.
- dietrichepp 11y agoWhy would you put the flag for planet Earth on Mars? That just seems confusing.
- kqr2 11y agoFor a good podcast / ted talk on the elements of a good flag design, check out: http://99percentinvisible.org/news/99-invisible-at-ted/ http://99percentinvisible.org/news/99-invisible-at-ted/
- wahsd 11y agoWhat a bunch of nonsense. Can we at least start acting like humans are marginally advanced by just skipping the whole flag thing, a fetish used in ancient times to indicated who you belonged to and to communicate across open space during combat and for wholly violent and militaristic reasons. Sure, it's not really a flag, a piece of fabric suspended from a big stick, but at the very least, let's simply go with an icon, rather than "flag", aka, rectangle. It's so primitive an nonsensical.
- maus42 11y agoIt doesn't have an organisation or even a not-very-organized ideological movement or anything to back it up. Thus, all the symbolism remain meaningless because practically nobody cares about it. And those who care or say so (for whatever purposes) are probably sporting UN emblems, and have been doing that for about half a century. In reality, if the need arises, we'll use the UN org and its flag to represent Earth, if it's still around (it probably will) and security council can decide upon what to do with the aliens (no idea). (Assuming the pessimistic but oh-so-realistic scenario, cooperation won't probably work out, so we'll probably have the majority of security council maybe waving the UN flag (if the majority is suitably overwhelming), the others waving whatever alliance symbols they bother to come up with (if at all, in the world wars just different compositions of national flags were popular in the propaganda, and that's not likely to change), and the first global civil war. After it's over and if there's still someone around to declare themselves as the winning side, the victors' flag (which will be used) will be a meaningful flag full of symbolism.)
- obeattie 11y agoAll I can see is a striking resemblance to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hazard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hazard
- alanh 11y agoThe implications are apt, I’m afraid
- sebnap 11y agoIf the earth needs a flag, then the flag has the purpose to identify the earth and indicate the origin of an earthling. Thus, it should look like the earth as seen from space. Which would result in the borders of our continents. This would be boring for us, but it would make sense for aliens.
- Udik 11y agoJust googled for "earth flag". Among the various results, this is the only one that impressed me: http://marketblog.envato.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ru75u9.jpg.png http://marketblog.envato.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ru75... Not saying it could actually be used as a flag. Notice how it puts the accent on us rather than the environment. I find it fresh and combative, it reminds us of our unity but also of our animality. It says very well who and what we are (without giving away our address!). However it's not inclusive and well-meaning enough to be politically acceptable. Isn't that strange? All the other efforts, including the one linked by the OP, look trivial or perfunctory to me.
- izolate 11y agoStylish, sure. But this Earth is so much more than just one species of primate. If life is to define Earth, it should be more inclusive.
- SZJX 11y agoLol this flag actually looks like the flag of some Japanese shogun. Maybe somebody has even already used it in history!