Thursday, May 17, 2007

New Jersey



When I was designing this New Jersey flag design, I wanted there to be no five-pointed stars, because if there were too many five-pointed stars, it would either become a tradition or it would become crazy. The blue background represents the Atlantic Ocean. The fleurs-de-lis and the green stripe represent the state's nickname, "The Garden State". There are three fleurs-de-lis because New Jersey was the 3rd state to enter the Union. Everything on the flag is arranged vertically, resembling a skyscraper, which represents New Jersey's large amount of urban areas. The red, white, and blue represents the United States.

The current New Jersey flag has the state coat of arms in the center of the flag, which is even uglier when placed on a buff background.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fleurs-de-lis is the traditional symbol of France before the Republic was declared in 1789.

It is depicted on the flags of Quebec, St. Louis, Louisville, Detroit, New Orleans and Vincinnes, IN, among others, because these places were controlled by France at one time.

Since New Jersey was never part of New France, the fleurs-de-lis have no meaning and are completely out of place in this design.

FlagFreak said...

Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur-de-lis. Anyway, I can see that the fleur-de-lis is usually associated with France, but does that stop it from being anywhere else? I don't think it should. Take the five-pointed star, for example. It was first used on the flag of the United States. But soon, many, many other countries were using the five-pointed star in their flags for no reason at all other than that they could not think of any other symbol to represent their country. They were out of imagination and needed a symbol so they used the five-pointed star, even though they had nothing to do with the United States. I used the fleurs-de-lis in this design because I wanted a better symbol than the five-pointed star on the New Jersey flag, and the fleurs-de-lis was good because it is a stylized flower, and New Jersey's nickname is "The Garden State". Actually, the fleur-de-lis was used all over the world on flags before the five-pointed star was invented. I do think the fleurs-de-lis on the flag work better than five-pointed stars would, but I could be wrong. I think the red, white, and blue symbolize the United States enough, but the five-pointed star also represents the United States. And since New Jersey has not much to do with France, I will replace the fleurs-de-lis with five-pointed stars and see how that looks, and if it looks better, I'll put it on the blog. Also, if you have any design for the flag of New Jersey, please send it to me so I can put it on this post if it is good. Thanks!