State Flags, You're Welcome (Part 1)

Further to this four-part series of posts way back here, I've gone ahead and done what nobody asked me to ... whipped up some concepts for improving some of the state flags of the U.S. that could use some improvement. Mind you, I'm totally unqualified and a lazy Photoshop user who follows the path of least effort, but even so, I think I came up with some ideas worth tossing around, if not out. My immediate inspiration is the current flag redesign of my state of residence, Minnesota, which went from this hot mess:

to this elegantly simple design, that any child could draw, anyone with a needle and thread could sew, and anyone could point out of a line-up of state flags and recognize at once as Minnesota:

Skipping over the flags that I don't think I can improve on at the present – including the fairly recently updated flags of Mississippi and Utah, as well as a couple of flags (cough Florida and Alabama) that just need to go back to the drawing board – here are some before-and-afters that I'd like folks to consider as tiny steps toward the ultimate goal of every state having a flag that does what a flag should do. Which means, for one thing, NOT having the name of the state spelled out in great big, block letters! Here's the flag of Arkansas:

Here's exactly the same flag, but without the painfully obvious. Also, I pushed the middle two stars a little farther apart, feeling that they looked crowded, but still with an eye toward preserving the diamond shape befitting the diamond state. Too naked looking, yet? Maybe the stars could be spaced out even better.

Here's the "California Republic" flag.

And here it is again, without the text that no one needs to identify it as the flag of California, and with the red stripe widened a bit to balance it out:

How about Delaware? Awfully proud of their date of statehood, aren't they?

And now, without that ugly line of text, and it might be even better with the interesting bit blown up in proportion:

Idaho's flag is just ridiculous, spelling out the name of the state not once but twice:

This is just a beginning of what I'd like to propose, maybe extending the landscape (and not just the sky) behind the Great Seal images to the edges of the flag:

Illinois is one of my least favorite state flags, with upside-down text, two dates, and ugly little blades of grass:

Here it is without the images that especially irritate me, though it still leaves much to be desired:

Indiana's flag has just one tiny thing that irritates me:

Can you spot the difference without it?

Iowa has more of what Illinois suffers from:

Just imagine it like this:

...or even this:

The name of Kansas hits you in the eye, but the picture it mansplains doesn't:

Some guy named Steve Hamaker proposed this improvement:

...which I took even further:

Here's Kentucky's flag as it is:

And here's Kentucky as it could be, appealing a little more to the eye:

Here's Maine, for another hard-to-distinguish-at-a-distance state seal on a blue field:

And here's my favorite part of the Maine flag, with space cleared around it to bring it into better focus:

One of these days, people are going to start calling the Massachusetts flag "problematic":

This should clear it up:

Michigan has at least two too many Latin exercises embroidered on its flag:

Here it is again, pared down a bit:

I've got more to share, but this post has gone long enough for now. Part 2 yet to come!