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South Dakota State Flag Concept


hettinger_rl

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So I'm not a big fan of the flag of my homestate South Dakota. They had a great design until they relinquished clain to the title of "The Sunshine State" to Florida. After that they just slapped the state seal on the sun and called it "The Mount Rushmore State." In 1989 a home grown artist by the name of Dick Termes came up with a design that, over the years, beame popular enough to bring a "motion to change the flag" to the legislature in 2012. That motion failed and we are still stuck with a boring, unoriginal design.

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I have been tinkering with my own version of a SD flag and have narrowed it down to 3 options. I'm looking for some feedback on their shapes, I will clean up a final version once it's narrowed down.

All three incorporate the sun shape, that has always been a part of the flag, combined with an outer ring of red diamonds. The outer ring creates a look similar to a Lakota War Bonnet design (this adds a Native American element).

I also added a circle of color to the center of the sun to give the look of a sunflower which is one of our states leading crops (this adds an agricultural element).

Finally they all show some sort of stripe that moves behind the sun and expands to the right of the design, this is depicting our expanding future, the way that products goods and services from our state shine accross the country, and it helps re-inforce the agricultural aspect by creating the look of an old fashioned windmill (our state is expanding rapidly in the modern wind turbine/energy industry).

 

1.

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2.

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3. This concept adds the shape of the Lakota medicine wheel.

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Easier to compare visually:

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Please let me know what you think of the concepts.

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All of your concepts are striking visually.  But they all give the impression of a lighthouse more than a windmill or sunflower.  All those designs make me think of a seafaring state.

If the state has adopted the "Mount Rushmore State" motto, then perhaps a new flag should use the silhouette of the mountain, which is one of the most recognisable monuments in the world.

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10 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

All of your concepts are striking visually.  But they all give the impression of a lighthouse more than a windmill or sunflower.  All those designs make me think of a seafaring state.

If the state has adopted the "Mount Rushmore State" motto, then perhaps a new flag should use the silhouette of the mountain, which is one of the most recognisable monuments in the world.

The silhouette of Mount Rushmore would just be an unrecognizable blob:

1.jpg

 

 

Im actually going to go off the board for my favorite and say #1, but with the medicine wheel in the middle of the windmill.

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7 hours ago, Cosmic said:

 

18 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

All of your concepts are striking visually.  But they all give the impression of a lighthouse more than a windmill or sunflower.  All those designs make me think of a seafaring state.

If the state has adopted the "Mount Rushmore State" motto, then perhaps a new flag should use the silhouette of the mountain, which is one of the most recognisable monuments in the world.

 

The silhouette of Mount Rushmore would just be an unrecognizable blob:

 

1.jpg

 

 

Ah, I see.  I was thinking that a silhouette would preserve the profiles.

So, then, perhaps some kind of drawn rendering, such as this one:

rushmore.jpg

 

 

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The last thing South Dakota needs to do is put Mount Rushmore on ANOTHER state symbol.

 

I mean, seriously - every license plate since 1952? Mount Rushmore. "Welcome to South Dakota" signs? Mount Rushmore. The state quarter? Mount Rushmore. The second round of state quarters? Mount Rushmore!

 

sd16.jpg   SD-state_sign2.jpg

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Flags are a place for heavy symbolism, not t-shirt graphics.

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9 hours ago, Cosmic said:

The silhouette of Mount Rushmore would just be an unrecognizable blob:

1.jpg

 

 

Im actually going to go off the board for my favorite and say #1, but with the medicine wheel in the middle of the windmill.

More like this?:

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1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Ah, I see.  I was thinking that a silhouette would preserve the profiles.

So, then, perhaps some kind of drawn rendering, such as this one:

rushmore.jpg

 

 

The main issue I have with using Mount Rushmore is that it is EVERYWHERE in our state and in the state's branding (logo, driver's license, license plates, etc). I'm proud to have the monument in SD, but it gets to the point where to outside viewers it may seem as though thats all we have here. It's like saying that Califorinia should have the Golden Gate Bridge on their flag; or that Texas should have the Alamo.

A secondary (and a bit more personal) problem is that the monument was constructed illegally and on a flag would kinda slap the NA tribes in our state in the face....again.

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I decided to swap out the red with a darker blue and change the stipe to come straight through:

2c2P.png3bP.png

I then decided that the thinner stripe looks better and especially good if the flag would need to be displayed vertically:

2c2P1.png3bP1.png

 

I also created a Lakota version of the flag:

LakotaP.png

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7 hours ago, Captain Tsubasa said:

 

I like this the best so far. The colors also eliminate the "seafaring state / lighthouse" association too.

Yes it would be nice, however this would likely never work. There are too many "passive-aggressive racists" in the state.

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  • 3 months later...

I think the latest version is the best, but I think the colors from the Lakota version (or at least different colors) are very much needed, for two reasons.

 

1. The red, yellow, and black are much, much more striking. As other people have said, the current colors make it a little bit lighthouse-y, which isn't really at thing in South Dakota. Now, you mentioned an issue of racism, and that's an interesting issue to have to deal with. Maybe there's a third color set that would make it look so good without a racist issue? Maybe leave off the medicine wheel entirely?

 

2. Most state flags, not all but a large majority of the seal-on-bedsheet flags, are a blue field with either a recolored yellow seal (Oregon, Nebraska, et al.) or the full color seat (New York, Pennsylvania, etc), and they all suck. I think if a state is going to redesign their flag to have something personal and distinctive, removing themselves from the blue and yellow club is a very good way to do that. You need a color scheme in my opinion that is neither blue/yellow nor red/white/blue, and do something that is completely and entirely South Dakotan.

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1 hour ago, NoE38 said:

I like the latest version the best, but I would add a think blue outline around the yellow so that it doesn't blend in to the white as much. Really great concept though.

 

49 minutes ago, Big Yellow Flag said:

I think the latest version is the best, but I think the colors from the Lakota version (or at least different colors) are very much needed, for two reasons.

 

1. The red, yellow, and black are much, much more striking. As other people have said, the current colors make it a little bit lighthouse-y, which isn't really at thing in South Dakota. Now, you mentioned an issue of racism, and that's an interesting issue to have to deal with. Maybe there's a third color set that would make it look so good without a racist issue? Maybe leave off the medicine wheel entirely?

 

2. Most state flags, not all but a large majority of the seal-on-bedsheet flags, are a blue field with either a recolored yellow seal (Oregon, Nebraska, et al.) or the full color seat (New York, Pennsylvania, etc), and they all suck. I think if a state is going to redesign their flag to have something personal and distinctive, removing themselves from the blue and yellow club is a very good way to do that. You need a color scheme in my opinion that is neither blue/yellow nor red/white/blue, and do something that is completely and entirely South Dakotan.

I stuck with the blue/gold because it'd be more likely that the state would make a small move like that. A color scheme based on the state flower (pasque) could be nice, but I just feel like people would embrace a new look that features colors they are comfortable with. I think that the blue sky and golden sun represents our state well and if this design would go through we'd be "wearing it better" than the other bedspread states and they'd have to change more to distinguish themselves.

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1 hour ago, hettinger_rl said:

 

I stuck with the blue/gold because it'd be more likely that the state would make a small move like that. A color scheme based on the state flower (pasque) could be nice, but I just feel like people would embrace a new look that features colors they are comfortable with. I think that the blue sky and golden sun represents our state well and if this design would go through we'd be "wearing it better" than the other bedspread states and they'd have to change more to distinguish themselves.

Oh, your concept 100% wears it better than the standard state flag, it looks great, I just don't know how much it would be distinguished when you're looking at all the state flags and almost all of them are blue with a thing.

 

I'm not from South Dakota, but around here, you never see the state flag (New York). Most people don't even know what it looks like (somebody asked me what our state flag is just the other day). I don't know if continuity is reason enough to keep the colors, although I like the blue sky and golden sun.

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On 5/5/2017 at 0:58 PM, Big Yellow Flag said:

Oh, your concept 100% wears it better than the standard state flag, it looks great, I just don't know how much it would be distinguished when you're looking at all the state flags and almost all of them are blue with a thing.

 

I'm not from South Dakota, but around here, you never see the state flag (New York). Most people don't even know what it looks like (somebody asked me what our state flag is just the other day). I don't know if continuity is reason enough to keep the colors, although I like the blue sky and golden sun.

Yeah, most people do know what it looks like, mostly because of the seal.But it flies along side the american flag in many places. And the colors (or at least a variance) are used by the largest college in the state.

 

One thing I imagine is people going to Mount Rushmore; they have the main walkway flanked with every state's flag and ours blends in so much. I think that this would really pop out in that setting.

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