Mississippi needs a new flag. For posterity, here are my thrown-together ideas:
These first two draw from the 1876 seal of Mississippi, and include a flag with 20 stripes, since it was the 20th state admitted to the Union. In the first it’s bound to the flag by the 13th stripe as a symbol of perpetual binding union under the Constitution, a reversal of the secessionist message of the old flag. With the lettering I sought to channel the spaced-out lettering on older banners such as the Gadsden Flag.
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For the other two submissions I more or less just placed the state flower, the Magnolia, on a green background. This hearkens back to older and unofficial flags still in use that use Magnolia symbols. I think the Latin version of “In God We Trust” rolls off the tongue nicer than the English, don’t you agree? The outline of the flower was drawn with Radial, an Android app. If the commission picks it they’ll have to get an artist to draw a better one. I sort of just cribbed the White Rose of York for it, just matching the colors a bit better. I cannot draw with a mouse and don’t have a tablet.
In both cases I placed a blue stripe on the left side to symbolize the river after which the state is named flowing along its western border.
Since I suspect this commission will meet almost entirely online, I designed these flags to look good on a computer screen first and foremost by making them 1920×1080, like desktop wallpapers. The team picked for this was coached on vexillology, I designed the first flags for if the lesson didn’t sink in and the last two for if it did.
If only it were Alabama that needed a new flag, the shape of the state itself would work:
I N G O D W E T R U S T !
John