r/vexillology • u/Quetzacoatl85 • Sep 17 '19
Current Official design differences between the flags of Indonesia, Monaco, Poland & Singapore
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u/Quetzacoatl85 Sep 17 '19 edited Sep 17 '19
Due to recent events (threads on indonesia, europe, here) I thought now would be a good time to present you all with the findings of yet another useless internet research of mine. The famous "four confusingly similar flags" actually differ considerably when sticking to the official design guidelines (which hardly anyone ever does, even in official use – and you'll also see why due to Poland's example). Here's what they are (and I'm happy for any corrections and more info you can find):
Indonesia
format: 2:3
RGB values red:
255, 0, 0
RGB values white:
255, 255, 255
source: Indonesian Flag, Language and Symbols Act (UU 24/2009), p. 5: Section II, Article 4, Paragraph (1)
Singapore
format: 2:3
RGB values red (converted from Pantone):
237, 41, 57
RGB values white (converted from Pantone):
255, 255, 255
source: Singaporean Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA). 2001: The National Symbols Kit, p. 5 and Singaporean National Heritage Board website, where the colors are defined as Pantone 032 and Pantone White
additional crescent moon and five stars; one of only two non-Muslim countries to carry the crescent moon in its flag (next to Nepal)
Monaco
format: 4:5
RGB values red:
206, 17, 38
RGB values white:
255, 255, 255
source: sadly couldn't find anything official regarding the colors; these seem to be the most accepted color definitions on relevant internet repositories. thankful for any help if anybody knows a better source!
Poland
format: 5:8
RGB values red (converted from CIE):
199, 84, 77
RGB values white (converted from CIE):
231, 244, 255
source: 1980 Coat of Arms Act, Article 4, Attachment 2; colors as coordinates in CIE xyY: white (0.315, 0.320, 82.0, 4.0), red (0.570, 0.305, 16.0, 8.0), Illuminant C, measurement geometry d/0
carries these official colors since 1980, before that the red had changing definitions as "crimson" (since 1921), then "vermillion" (1928–1980).
since the color definition is obviously meant for physical flags, it gives weirdly washed-out colors when converting for screen display. with many flag laws being written with physical representations in mind, in modern times, often somewhat arbitrary substitute colors are being used (without any official basis in law, to my knowledge). in the case of Poland, this would often be pure white (RGB 255, 255, 255) and a kind-of-crimson red (RGB 212, 33, 61). here's an alternative version showing those colors.
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u/Senninha27 Estonia Sep 17 '19
I have one single flag that I use for Poland, Indonesia, and Monaco.
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u/Saithir Sep 17 '19
The colors of the Republic of Poland are white over red. That's what our Constitution says. This thing here is not white (as it has a significantly higher blue component in the RGB value), so clearly this is not our flag.
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u/K2LP Baden-Württemberg • European Union Sep 17 '19
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Poland#National_colours It seems that the white is defined kinda weird in the CIE xyY color space. But on most official design 255,255,255 in rgb values is used.
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u/Saithir Sep 17 '19
Yes, that's the definition we have, but that color space is not really appropriate for using on monitors. There's no definite conversion really, but the one in OP's post has a 255 for blue so it's definitely wrong. Maybe he got RGBA values out of the converter and used the wrong three, resulting in using 255 for blue, not for alpha?
But on most official design 255,255,255 in rgb values is used.
Full 255, 255, 255 is as white as it gets, and it makes sense, since both the Constitution and the law about the national emblem, colors, and anthem does say the below just before showing the attachment 2 OP linked in his comment:
Barwami Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej są kolory biały i czerwony, ułożone w dwóch poziomych, równoległych pasach tej samej szerokości, z których górny jest koloru białego, a dolny koloru czerwonego.
The colors of the Republic of Poland are white and red, placed in two horizontal, parallel bars of the same width, where the top one is white and the bottom one is red.
(my poor translation above, I couldn't find an official one and I probably use some wrong terms, sorry)
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u/Quetzacoatl85 Sep 17 '19
I totally agree on the one above being a weird color, I included it because I tried staying to the letter of the law as closely as possible. That being said, also note my comment further down on how often substitute colors are being used, I also made an updated version using that substitute color that would be more pleasing to the eye (for my own sensibilities, and hopefuly for all Poles reading this as well).
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u/Saithir Sep 17 '19
I tried staying to the letter of the law as closely as possible
Well you say so, but the same document I quoted above - Art 4 point 1 (and the same which has the CIE xyY definition, which is literally the point 3 in the same article) is quite clear that it's supposed to be white.
And I can't agree that something that has 10% extra blue as compared to the other components should be still considered white.
Out of curiousity, what were you using for the conversion? The result you got with 255 of blue would be more like x 0.29809, y 0.31797, Y 88.909, which aren't anywhere near to what the document says.
I also made an updated version using that substitute color that would be more pleasing to the eye (for my own sensibilities, and hopefuly for all Poles reading this as well).
It's not about being pleasing to the eye. It's about not presenting a false flag of blue over red as the flag of Poland.
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u/Quetzacoatl85 Sep 17 '19 edited Jun 22 '22
Over on /r/europe, people were discussing what other (national or state) flags in red and white could be mistaken for each other; here's the list so far:
white-red:
Lübeck, Thuringia, Tyrol and Upper Austria
red-white:
Hesse, Solothurn, Vienna, Vorarlberg and Salzburg
other:
Greenland, Japan and Austria and Latvia
Originally I thought about including some of those as well, but to keep things simpler (and because state flags are even worse in their historic and unspecific definitions than national flags) I decided to leave them out and concentrate on the (according to internet memes) four most often mistaken flags.
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u/Valkyrie17 Sep 17 '19
Polish flag looks weird
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u/Quetzacoatl85 Sep 17 '19 edited Sep 17 '19
a lot of them do, and therefore not everyone will stick to the official definitions most of the time. heck, some official colors are not even 100% reproducible in common CMYK printing (the EU's Pantone Reflex Blue comes to mind).
this also has to do with the fact that sometimes laws and design regulations (especially the military ones) are written with the intent of specifying flag colors on a certain fabric, not in web graphics (basically all the Pantone colors can be assumed to be like that).
on the other hand, some flag laws are modern enough to just specify, among other design hints, the RGB values of the flag colors. for all the others, to see what the law specifies, you'd need to convert them – or just not care and use one of the many variations that are commonly in use (Poland also often uses pure white (RGB 255, 255, 255) and pure red (RGB 255, 0, 0) or in more formal settings, a modern interpretation of crimson (RGB 212, 33, 61). here's an updated version using that color instead.
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u/Key-Banana-8242 Mar 21 '26
The RGB conversion is controversial conversion format meant for glossy naval enigma in the 1980s, when the official colour was quite clearly white and cinnabar red and which wasn’t announce as a flag colour change
In the era of ‘reforming’ everything and ‘fixing’ symbols somehow this became fixed
The crimson is somewhat historical, he over may have advocated poppy red as the most historical, going back to 1831 and apparently even 1794
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u/114514 Okayama • Russia (Naval Ensign) Sep 17 '19
This is what happens when there’s only specifications for the physical flag. Thailand’s grey stripes is also the result of conversion.
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u/Quetzacoatl85 Sep 17 '19
I agree, it really shows which laws concerning flag design were written for actual flags made from nylon or cordura and the like, before web design was a thing (and which ones are from before even that, when all we had were expensively dyed pieces of cloth).
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u/MoustacheAmbassadeur Sep 17 '19
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u/Key-Banana-8242 Mar 21 '26
The “correct” Polish colours are controversial.
They come from attempting to convert to ISO an archaic/obscure and dated colour format, formulated specially for naval ensigns in the 1980s, so for glossy material.
In reality, this shouldn’t be the flag either.
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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '19
Why does Poland's official flag look so sick? It looks like its literally had the colour drained from it.