Workshop Australian Flag

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This brilliant suggestion came up last year on Twitter: let's just replace the Union Jack with our own flag…

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Mr Eagle said:
And awful. You forgot awful.
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Whats wrong with it ? All it is doing is removing the union jack. The union jack looks like a hunk a s**t

Its our flag without the britishness
 
Groupie_ said:
Whats wrong with it ? All it is doing is removing the union jack. The union jack looks like a hunk a s**t

Its our flag without the britishness
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At an absolute bare minimum, I would centre the fed star vertically and shuffle it horizontally to get the visual balance a bit better. You're replacing the jack with something much smaller and putting nothing else below it.

For me, blue and white just doesn't cut it. Plenty of colour combos say Australia to me, this isn't one of them.

Also, in terms of creating other flags (states etc.), I'd have the Southern Cross on the left and use that as the consistent left side motif.
 
Nice to see this getting some discussion. The brief is an almost impossible one.

Stewart2Austin said:
I like the idea of having a flag that unifies us rather than divides us.

We should have a monocoloured flag
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I agree, I have thought this for a while now.

Symbols, stripes, stars -- it's all kitsch and it's all so last millennium...


Screen Shot 2015-01-20 at 8.06.10 PM.png


The whole "red white and blue" versus "green and gold" thing is absurd. Green and gold are the national colours, unfortunately though, you can't do a lot with them: Kangaroos and stars tend to look bad in green and gold.

My only other idea would be to have something green, gold, red and blue, but how to do that without ending up looking like South Africa, the Olympics, the Mardi Gras or a combination thereof is not something I'm prepared to spend any time on.

PS: Blaxland (OP) -- needs more boomerangs.
 
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DiamondSupply said:
The whole "red white and blue" versus "green and gold" thing is absurd. Green and gold are the national colours, unfortunately though, you can't do a lot with them: Kangaroos and stars tend to look bad in green and gold.

My only other idea would be to have something green, gold, red and blue, but how to do that without ending up looking like South Africa, the Olympics, the Mardi Gras or a combination thereof is not something I'm prepared to spend any time on.

PS: Blaxland (OP) -- needs more boomerangs.
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Green and Gold aren't national colours though. They are our sporting colours. People have started thinking that the Green and Gold are our only part of our identity that matters these days when we've had the blue, red and white for far longer than that.

Incorporating the green and gold into a flag would be good though, as sport is a large part of our culture. But making it the only colours on there? No. It wouldnt represent us or our heritage(s).

As for the Blaxland flag? I reckon it needs more dots :p
 
Bryce_Jersey17 said:
Green and Gold aren't national colours though. They are our sporting colours. People have started thinking that the Green and Gold are our only part of our identity that matters these days when we've had the blue, red and white for far longer than that.
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Culture isn't static, dude. It's ever-changing and evolving. It's like language. 'Faggot' no longer means bundle of sticks. 'Literally' literally means the opposite of 'literally'. s**t like that. It's always changing.

Australian culture is always changing, too. We had the White Australia policy up until a few decades ago. Are we still a white Australia? No, we changed, we're a multicultural society today. We took Indigenous children from their homes for racial reasons up until the 1990's. Do we still do that today? No, we changed. These are just racial examples but the point still stands. Culture changes.

Part of our ever-changing culture is our national colours. Yeah, traditionally they were sporting colours, but, over time, people have taken pride in the green and the gold, and, today, many people would consider them to be our national colours. Therefore, they are our national colours. Because that's what people think. That's how it works. When we 'imagine'* something to be, then it becomes real.

Whether or not our flag should be green and gold is another discussion, though, but to dismiss it under the false pretense of them "not being national colours" is absurd.

*I use imagine not in the sense of make-believe, but rather in the sense that it doesn't exist in real terms, just in the minds of people. I borrow the term from Greg Anderson's book 'Imagined Communities'. He refers to Australia as an 'imagined community' and argues that nations should be defined as communal structures, as opposed to political structures or territorial structures, whereby the populous have a shared sense of belonging and identity. Once again, the adjective does not imply that the political nation-state is ‘made up’ or does not exist, but rather that the idea of a shared national identity exists in the mind only “ because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”.
 
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Mr Eagle said:
Ow my brain.
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To make things more confusing, it doesn't really mean the opposite of itself. Well, it does in some contexts, but most of the time it's used as an emphasis modifier.

People used to (and still do use) it to mean something that is genuine, as in, you'd say it as a way to show that you're not lying
e.g. 'I own six cars' may sound far-fetched or like hyperbole, so someone may add 'I literally own six cars" to emphasis that they do, in fact, own six cars.

But it's evolved to emphasise things (often in a hyperbolic manner) rather than to be used in its 'literal' sense.
e.g. 'I am literally dying of hunger' as opposed to 'I am kind of hungry'

What's another word that has gone through this exact same evolution? 'Really'.

'Really' used to mean something that is genuine, now it is almost used exlusively as an emphasis modifer. In the past, "I really like you" meant that you genuinely liked someone and you weren't lying. Today, it means you like them a lot.

Just some fun with linguistics.
 
Stewart2Austin said:
Culture isn't static, dude. It's ever-changing and evolving. It's like language. '******' no longer means bundle of sticks. 'Literally' literally means the opposite of 'literally'. s**t like that. It's always changing.

Australian culture is always changing, too. We had the White Australia policy up until a few decades ago. Are we still a white Australia? No, we changed, we're a multicultural society today. We took Indigenous children from their homes for racial reasons up until the 1990's. Do we still do that today? No, we changed. These are just racial examples but the point still stands. Culture changes.

Part of our ever-changing culture is our national colours. Yeah, traditionally they were sporting colours, but, over time, people have taken pride in the green and the gold, and, today, many people would consider them to be our national colours. Therefore, they are our national colours. Because that's what people think. That's how it works. When we 'imagine'* something to be, then it becomes real.

Whether or not our flag should be green and gold is another discussion, though, but to dismiss it under the false pretense of them "not being national colours" is absurd.

*I use imagine not in the sense of make-believe, but rather in the sense that it doesn't exist in real terms, just in the minds of people. I borrow the term from Greg Anderson's book 'Imagined Communities'. He refers to Australia as an 'imagined community' and argues that nations should be defined as communal structures, as opposed to political structures or territorial structures, whereby the populous have a shared sense of belonging and identity. Once again, the adjective does not imply that the political nation-state is ‘made up’ or does not exist, but rather that the idea of a shared national identity exists in the mind only “ because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”.
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THANK YOU.

inb4redwhiteandblue

Yes, the green and gold ARE our national colours. Blue, white, and red are the colours of our flag, blue and gold WERE the heraldic colours, but in 2015, our national colours are green and gold (whether by law or by practice). The current flag represents an Australia, subject to the United Kingdom, part of the British Empire quite well. As for a progressive Australia, made up of a number of different cultures and beliefs, a united and independent nation trying to become one of the leaders in the Asia-Pacific region, the flag lets us down, and lets us down terribly.
 

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When will you people learn? In America we stopped using corporal punishment and things have never been better. The streets are safe, old people strut confidently through the darkest alleys and the weak and nerdy are admired for their computer programming abilities. So, like us, let your children run wild and free, for as the old saying goes, "Let your children run wild and free."
 
You always err on the side of assuming that everyone under the age of 40 will automatically get any reference, regardless of how obscure, from seasons 2-10 of the Simpsons.
 
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