New Minnesota State Flag and Seal Chosen
2023-12-20 - [52] 10:5
I'm a Minnesotan. With the exception of a few months a few years ago where I lived in NYC, I have always lived in Minnesota. As a Minnesotan, it's bugged me that the Minnesota state flag somehow managed to blend in with like half of the states being a blue flag with a state seal, while also being uniquely "not good" to frequently get ranked as the worst state flag in the US. This October, I saw in a newspaper that the state was taking submissions for a new state flag and state seal. This was not that long after CGPGrey did his video ranking all of the state flags, so I was excited to keep up with the process. Well, a base design for a seal has been chosen and a final flag design has been picked. There is still the chance that the designs can be vetoed, but that seems quite unlikely.
Seal Design
Minnesota decided to go with submission S224 by Ross Bruggink for the state seal. I think it fits the state quite well, with enough detail to look quite good for a seal and understanding that a seal is not a flag (so doesn't need to be too simple). It's also not too modern, so it can last as the state seal pretty easily for generations without needing to be changed for looking too dated in 10 years. The design gets the feeling of the state across quite well in my opinion and features a loon! Changes can still happen to the seal before the new year, but I don't expect too many changes. I would be willing to get a patch of this seal and wear it to show Minnesota pride! Good job, Minnesota, you actually picked something pretty good here! The following image is the seal design that was chosen.
Flag Design
I'm... disappointed... Minnesota decided to pick a pretty good flag design as a base, which CGPGrey has called the "Polaris Tricolor", but then in my opinion ruined the great design on Tuesday. The original design, submission F1953 by Andrew Prekker, had 3 stripes, white, green, and blue, with an inverted pentagon shape for the left side of the flag. The colors were also nicely muted and the star looked like a compass rose to show we are the north star state that snows, has great forest lands, and has many lakes. The pentagon even looked sort of like the shape of the state while still being simple! It felt like a cold northern alternate version of the Texas or Puerto Rico flag.
The commission on Tuesday decided to change the star design to one with 8-fold rotational symmetry, darken the pentagon, and remove the green and white. My rating for the flag design: It's... fine. I'd give it a C. The image below is final design for the flag.
Somehow more disappointingly, there were a bunch of conspiracy theories about the flag design with 3 colors of stripes, although it was a modification of the flag... Of course there were crazy conspiracy theories about it... I'm not looking forward to many of the folks in my small town deciding to recite the conspiracy theories because they believe every ragebait thing they see on Facebook. If you want to do psychic damage to yourself, you can look up the conspiracy theories. I won't go into detail about what the conspiracy theory is or go out of my way to debunk the points in it, as that will be a waste of my time and use up some of the hope I have in humanity...
The image below is the original tri-color version of the flag.
The flag I wish had won
My favorite flag design of the initial 6 finalists was the "Starflake" design by Brandon Hundt, which was submission F29. It was very simple in terms of amount of colors while still hitting a few things home quickly, which include blue to show we are the land of 10,000 lakes, polaris to show we are the north star state, and a snowflake to show we are the snowy state (even if snowflakes have 6 sides instead of 8). This flag design would have been an instant win for me if it were up to me to decide. Sadly, it was not up to me. The image below is the "Starflake" design.
