Flags that never flew: Unused designs from around the world

Flags. Each country has one, some are better, some are worse, and some have recently changed. That's another interesting topic for a video, countries that are in the process of changing their flag. But going back to this one, the topic of this video is precisely flag changes. Throughout history, most countries have, at one point or another, changed their flag. There are very few exceptions in the world for countries that have the same flag since they first adopted one, I think perhaps Denmark is actually the only one that's never changed it, having the oldest flag in the world. Come to think of it, that's another good topic for a video, the oldest flags in the world. But in this video, I want to take a look at a few moments when countries changed their flag, not trying to understand in great depth why they changed it or why they chose the flag they have today, but doing the opposite, kind of, and instead taking a look at the flags that weren't chosen. Most often because they looked terrible. I want to go through a few of those main flag change moments and show you one or two of these not so great proposals. I did a full video on proposed flags that were never used, including the good ones. I can leave the link for it in the description. Here I will just focus on the bad ones. So here are the worst flags proposed for countries in history. Now obviously this is my opinion, maybe some of you will like the flags, but let's start with the United States. After President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, his administration began to plan the admission of Alaska and Hawaii as states. In keeping with tradition, they would have to add two stars to their flag. Hearing of this need to change the national banner, thousands of people mailed unsolicited designs for a 50-state flag to the White House and Congress. Some were okay, presenting interesting redesigns, others were not so okay. Like this one, submitted by Philip Brown, which eliminated the white and red stripes. I honestly think the shapes of the stars are awful and losing the red would take away a lot of the US's identity. Not only does the dark blue and white have a bad contrast in a full flag, but also the odd shapes full of so many stars would likely look like a blurry shape whenever the flag was presented in a small size. Another not so good proposal was this one. It would also completely remove their identity and honestly the shape in which they place the USA initials, sort of interlaced, looks a little too much like this other symbol that this one guy in Germany really liked. Next, we have Finland. Before adopting its current flag of a dark blue cross on a white field, Finland received various designs for flags from its citizens. In this image, we can see a bunch of them, a lot of which were very good, but some would have been, in my view, a bad choice. This one, for instance, would I think present an awful contrast of colors. Dark blue, red, and dark green. This bottom one that looks exactly like Catalonia's flag would also have been a bad choice for that reason exactly. I get that the colors match their coat of arms, but still. Moving to North Africa, after the 1952 coup, Egypt declared itself a republic and several proposals for a new national flag were made. This one showed a white curve on a green field representing the Nile river. Way too complicated to work. Another one that doesn't look bad on its own, but that I think would have been a bad choice is this one for Poland. Claiming that white and red colors are outdated, artist Gregor Sklaman proposed a change to include the color black. He proposed various designs for the colors to be used, and they're all fine except for the fact they all look like other countries' flags, one of which being precisely the flag of the old German empire. The association with these I think makes no sense, and Poland's flag is good as it is from my perspective. Recent flag changing processes which ended up with the flag not changing was New Zealand. In the process of attempting to change their flag to get rid of the old British colonial one, New Zealand held a flag submission contest to its population. Some were good, once more. The ones that went to an actual public vote are actually some of the coolest flags that I've ever seen. But in the midst of all submissions, some pretty awful ones also existed. so awful some of them are actually pretty cool the most famous is the fantastic kiwi bird shooting a laser beam out of its eyes but i think my favorite is this one submitted by Luca Cameron which is just called potato man supposedly referencing the country's fish and chips eating culture one other flag that attempted to point to a cultural identity of the country is the sheep flag which apparently merges a sheep with a cloud these other two are also just hilarious i assume both were designed by children, which makes it funny, but imagine a country actually using these. Further north, an absolutely terrible flag proposal is this one. I don't think this is a serious flag proposal though, but rather the flag of a movement called the 908 Taiwan Republic Campaign. They're a movement that wants Taiwan to declare independence as its own state, instead of continuing to claim the mainland as also being its own territory. I'm not sure if they would want their movement's flag to be the country's flag should they succeed, but I hope not because it looks awful. The gradient background is terrible and the usage of text on a flag is, in general, a bad idea. One other flag proposal I don't think was that good was this one made by Teresa de Mier for Mexico. It would replace the Mexican tricolor, removing the red, white, and green identity. It would maintain the national emblem as the center, but six small light blue rectangles inside a red border would replace the tricolor. Perhaps the blue rectangles were to represent the lake slash water areas upon which the ancient capital was built. This isn't an awful flag, it can't be compared with the other absurd ones we saw and the more I look at it the more I actually like it due to how different it is from the flags we usually see without reaching into the ridiculous but I think the seemingly random placement of the rectangles would really harm the reproduction and memorization of the country's flag. One other proposed flag for Israel that I think wasn't that good either was this one, a huge red field and then a white rectangle with two blue stripes and a star of David. I don't really get the red field symbolism or the purpose that it serves, perhaps it was to represent the previous British mandate of Palestine since the UK uses red a lot, but it seems like such a waste of space when the elements that actually represent their identity are so small. One other awful flag, in my opinion, is this one, proposed by Greek revolutionary Rigas Feraios in 1821, a red, white, and black striped flag that makes me think more of a Middle Eastern country than it does Greece, although maybe back then they didn't yet associate these colors with those territories. It also features three crosses for the Christian nations of the Balkans and a club of Hercules beneath them, the only Greek element, but who would ever understand that's what it was. To be fair, he proposed this flag for his envisioned Pan-Balkan Federation, so it wouldn't just represent Greece, but honestly, I still don't think it would work to represent Balkan countries either. The attitude of several towards flag changing processes, like the one we saw with New Zealand, isn't recent. In 1910, when Portugal stopped being a monarchy and became a republic, the new government chose to change its flag and received various proposals. Some were serious, like the one eventually chosen, but others were absolutely insane. This one wanted to use a caravel in the center that would make it really easy to reproduce and this one is completely surreal and was apparently trying to break some record for the number of symbols present on a flag being absolutely chaotic. One other resembled the flag of Brazil, they just didn't work. And speaking of Brazil, they also had some not so great flag proposals when they adopted the current one in the late 1800s. This one proposed by Julio Ribeiro is one of them. Despite being interesting, it's both too similar to the US flag and also uses way too dark colors for a country like Brazil. Going back to the former British colonial countries that did or tried to change their flag, Australia is another example. Australia's flag, like New Zealand, is still the colonial one, but throughout history, various flag proposals have been made. Some are cool, like the 1854 Eureka flag, but a couple others not so much. At least for me. This 1992 kangaroo flag proposal isn't great. I get that kangaroos are a big part of Australian nature and I'm not against the idea of it being depicted on a flag, but this type of depiction looks a little too bad. Another one that I think wouldn't work is this 2013 proposal. It's called the Reconciliation Flag. Many yellow dots on a big star with the red boomerangs separating the indigenous and European populations that have influenced the country. I like the idea of of including aboriginal symbols but if it's a reconciliation flag it seems a little weird that they're separated. Also the star with the dots seems too detailed an element for a flag. In the 1960s Canada also went through a process of changing their flag from the old British colonial one to the current one. The official flag proposals were pretty good and only one of them was not so great. This one that included the British flag and the French one on top of the current one that they ended up choosing. I get wanting to represent the heritage of both colonizers, but why did they use the French monarchist flag? Also, the way they were just put on top of the sides didn't work very well. A flag has to be simple and this would go against that idea. Still on the topic of British colonialism, while they were still under British rule, a publication called Anglo-Indian Weekly published in 1904 a flag proposal for a future country of India. It might be one of the worst choice of colors that I've ever seen for a flag. And finally, we can't talk about terrible flag proposals without mentioning the absolutely awful EU barcode flag. It would join all the country's colors in bars, putting them next to each other in sequence and presenting it as the union's flag. It looks awful, would never work and was never used as a flag, but something that you might not know is that the design was actually used by the EU. In 2002, Dutch architect Rem Kulhaz designed the symbol but while it was reported as a replacement for the European flag that was never his intention. It was simply an identity symbol for the EU and in fact an updated version was used in the visual identity of the Austrian EU presidency in 2006. We can see it here on these pictures of several meetings and press conferences at the time. So those are some of the worst flags ever proposed for countries which thankfully were never chosen and put into use. What do you think? Do you like any of them? And are there any other bad flag proposals that I didn't mention? Let me know in the comments, as well as whether or not you would like to see those two flag ideas I mentioned at the start, the oldest flags in the world and countries that might soon change their flag. And what about the opposite of this, the coolest flag proposals that were never used, that also sounds like a really cool idea. Thanks so much for watching this video, subscribe if you want, and I will see you next time for more general knowledge.