Making the Utah Flag Machine

A few months ago I heard some rumblings about a potential effort to redesign the official flag for the State of Utah.

This was welcome news, but also met with some skepticism, as these types of government initiatives can become political nightmares, and quickly evolve into a design by committee nightmare.

Utah's current flag was created initially for the governor and was referred to as the "Governor's Flag" before it became official. Nothing says "Flag of the People" like something made for the chief politician.

Rob Foster and I had just been on a road trip to Oaxaca Mexico and had spent quality time scheming on design projects. I honestly can't remember if a flag generator was in the mix of things we discussed during this trip or not, but we were of the same mind and had already started a collaborative Figma file that included the starts of what would become Utah Flag Machine.

When I heard about the official announcement, I reached out with a text that read "It's Time!", and a link to the official announcement by the state. We spent a couple of nights and a few weekends putting all the pieces together.

Early proof of concept generated some great-looking flag combos that gave confidence that the general idea would work.

I was able to repurpose some code from a generative art project I had worked on during the pandemic (I know, it's still the pandemic, but I prefer past tense on this).

One of our primary goals of this project was to democratize and make something that would be fun and let everyone get in on the process.

We put in a broad base of colors, a bunch of symbols from Utah history, designed several base flags and unique layouts, and let the computer shuffle them together.

You can generate all kinds of flags. Some that look familiar, and some that are kind of wild.

I used Flag Machine to generate a flag that's a little like the commemorative flag proposed a few years ago. I tweaked the colors to give it a little more natural feel (orange for our red-rock country, and light blue for the sky).

I had seen previous flag designs for Utah and have always felt that things have been played way too safe. Similar elements, similar colors, and very basic layouts.

Ultimately a "safe" design may be the way to go, but I want to be able to see and explore all the crazy ones too.

Flag Machine generated this layout featuring Allosaurus, the State's official fossil.

I about lost my mind when I learned that we have a state fossil. What kid wouldn't be thrilled to have a freaking dinosaur on their state's flag?

Flag Machine lets you look at different variations and shuffle elements, making the design process delightful and serendipitous. I'm always pretty thrilled with some of the combinations, and my favorites are often those that I would never think to come up with.

Designing a flag (or anything) is is not an easy thing to do. Flag design even falls into a category where most people can't even pronounce or spell the word related to the discipline.

Vexillology? I've been a designer for over 20 years and the rules and rigor around this niche of the discipline are beyond me.

Everyone loves flags - we grew up making flags, drawing the American flag, and making flag designs in elementary art classes.

The constraints of flag design are also a nice break from the type of design work most designers are involved in daily. The idea of working on a design for something with one to three colors, simple shapes, and geometric layouts all inside of a 3x5 rectangle is a welcome relief.

Even with the simplicity, unless you have access to graphic design tools and the know-how to use them, designing a flag is just not something anyone can fire up.

Our idea was to create a generator based on classic flag designs and layouts and randomly create flags that could be used as inspiration – and modified to your liking.

Things came together quickly and we took a few shortcuts and pushed the thing out the door.

The site was fun enough, and on our first public announcement, we caught the attention of Utah's Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, who created her version of the flag with Flag Machine.

I really like the layout, but maybe I could explore it with some colors that might look a little more dynamic compared to all the other state flags.

I've had a blast making the Flag Machine. And plan to use it to help me make my own submission for Utah's flag update, and I'm pretty excited about it.

Please check it out, and let me see what you come up with!

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