National union
Like any creative person, I sometimes sit down to a blank window and wonder what to write here. And then, like a bolt of lightning: Illinois has decided to redesign their state flag. I live in Illinois! I’m a designer! I once wrote 2,000 words dissing their license plate redesign! And now a beautiful prairie of words will unfold. Aren’t you glad you subscribe to text?
The license plate was, by the secretary of state’s own admission, redesigned in 2016 by an intern who lives in Springfield. Cops creative directed it. We have, in a profound, objective sense, not had a good license plate design since 1996. Now Lincoln trolls us like this. Also, our state’s name is IWNOIS, apparently.
Our state flag is the sort of thing that you expect from a state who held up REAL ID nationally for over a decade because they refused to upgrade their driver’s license equipment. It’s the sort of thing you expect from a state whose capital exists solely to be the capital, which then fights with the entire rest of the economic engine of the state. We’ll put an eagle there, why not, eagles are dope as hell. Clarendon is the America font. Motto, check. Plains, check. A shield that vaguely conveys the American flag – well, how else are we supposed to know what country we’re in?
One can cleanly swap our state flag for any other state. Write “North Carolina” there instead, and it becomes the flag of North Carolina. It is of everywhere and nowhere, the least common denominator, utterly forgettable. That this exists in contraposition to one of the greatest city flags on earth, one which has inspired thousands of tattoos over many generations, should not be lost on anyone.
More context is necessary. The old secretary of state, the man responsible for the license plate fracases, retired. Now the new guy is reading the room and (checks notes) announcing a design contest. The good news is that the new guy recognizes, fully, on a soul level, that interns will not cut it for a job this big. The bad news is that design contests are morally bankrupt and nobody should ever participate in one under any circumstance. If they want a high-quality designer to design the state flag, the designer should get paid for their labor, full stop, especially if the flag is not used.
Regardless, Illinois wants to create spiritual distance from Chicago at all times, despite the fact that we currently run everything and will continue to do so for the rest of everyone’s lives as of this writing. And the best way to do that is to make a flag that fundamentally does not possess the characteristics of a good flag. Chicago already has “good flag” on lock. Each element of our flag has meaning, down to the points on each star. This is the hallmark of what comprises a “good flag” in almost any context imaginable. Imagine pitching “good flag” to Cardinals territory and not having it instantly scan as Chicago. Right.
And so that is your design brief. Square the circle. Unite all of us in a state so corrupt that almost all of our living governors have been convicted of something. Resolve generations of mutual hatred that have been churned to a rugged-individualist fever pitch under fascism & isolation. Do this by throwing some shapes on a rectangle.
Professional designers exist to address briefs like this.
And so Illinois exists at a beautiful & inspiring crossroads in their vexillological journey. There are, as I see it, five options:
Continue on with the morally bankrupt, objectively incorrect design contest.
Make the intern do it again.
Cancel the contest and do nothing, retaining the original flag.
Hire someone.
Rip the band-aid and go with the first flag candidate to hit my group texts, which is this.
I eagerly await my state’s consideration.