Yesterday the Minnesota State Emblems Redesign Commission selected a new design to replace their old messy, racist, state-seal-in-a-field-of-blue state flag.
The new flag features “an eight-pointed North Star against a dark blue background shaped like the state, with a solid light blue field at the right… The star echoes Minnesota’s state motto of ‘Star of the North.’ The commission’s chairman, Luis Fitch, said that to him, the light blue represents the Mississippi River, ‘the most important river in the United States,’ pointing to the North Star.”
That’s all fantastic, it’s more inclusive, and it looks great.
But that huge light blue field at the right, though… To anybody familiar with a map, it’s gonna represent Wisconsin. And it takes up about 53% of the flag’s surface area. Thus, I’m afraid that Minnesota has accidentally made a Wisconsin flag.
But it can be fixed! Below I offer 3 minimal updates that stay true to the original design while avoiding an embarrassing self-own. The final design still needs to be approved by the MN State Legislature, so contact your reps and suggest one of these tweaks...
1) Zoom-in and/or scootch-over — Simply crowding out the light-blue “Wisconsin” so it takes up a smaller proportion of the flag.
2) Square Flag — Accomplish the same as #1 by changing the shape of the flag. Flags don’t all have to be the same shape you know.
3) Swallow-Tail — Minnesota is a swallow-tail-shaped state, so why not have a swallow-tail-shaped flag? I think this version also makes it clearer that the light blue represents the St Croix and Mississippi Rivers.