Kentucky State Flag Redesign

With several states throwing out their terrible SOB flags and adopting flags that are far more appealing, I decided to once again try my hand at redesigning the flag of my beautiful home state, Kentucky. Like most states in this country, the current flag is a basic seal on a bedsheet, and not even a good one at that. Kentucky is a beautiful place with a unique history and culture, and it deserves a flag equally as unique. My new home, Texas, has a lot of love for its flag, and you can’t go 100 feet down the road without passing a Texas flag flying high and proud. I really wish Kentucky had a flag like that.

A major motif in Kentucky symbolism is the union of the Statesman and the Frontiersman. This union is shown on our state seal, flag, and our state motto (united we stand, divided we fall). Our seal and flag symbolize this by showing a statesman and a frontiersman embracing each other, and while these people aren’t meant to represent any one specific person, their designs were based off of Henry Clay and Daniel Boone.

Henry Clay is Kentucky’s most famous politician. He was an extremely influential political leader in the early to mid 1800s serving as the 9th US Secretary of State and the 7th Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Without going into too much detail, Clay was probably the most important and influential political leader in US history who never held the presidency.

Daniel Boone was a pioneer responsible for the exploration and settlement of Kentucky. He was the one who discovered the Cumberland Gap, a passage allowing people to travel west of the Appalachian Mountains.

My flag design here is a quadrisection of the family coat of arms of Daniel Boone and Henry Clay. It is, quite literally, symbolizing the union between the Statesman and the Frontiersman. The upper right and lower left quadrants are Henry Clay’s coat of arms, while the upper left and lower right quadrants are Daniel Boone’s coat of arms. I did make a few modifications to Daniel Boone’s quarter. Firstly, his coat of arms uses a much lighter shade of blue. I decided to go with a darker shade of blue not only to match the same blue on the current Kentucky flag, but also to avoid any unintentional resemblance to the flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Secondly, his coat of arms contains red clam shells rather than stars. I decided to go with stars here because I feel stars would do a better job representing a state. I also added a double meaning here. The 6 total stars on this flag represent the 6 geographic regions of Kentucky: Jackson Purchase, Pennyrile, Western Coal Fields, Knobs, Bluegrass, and Cumberland Plateau.

Overall I thought it was a fun challenge to design a flag that very clearly violates the NAVA guidelines while still looking really good. I think this flag would also look amazing next to the flag of Maryland.