Sunday, June 14, 2020

NAVA 54 Vexibit—Greg Hersh: A New Flag for Kodiak Island Proposal

Greg Hersh presented a vexibit for one of America's largest islands, Kodiak Island.  Currently, the city of Kodiak on Kodiak island has the typical rank and file seal on a field flag (RAFSOAF Flag).  Kodiak City's flag features four creatures: a bear, salmon, king crab, and prawn.

Hersh proposed a Kodiak Flag redesign in the 'Good Flag' style.  It is composed of a field of blue and black divided by a thin diagonal bend, from the lower hoist to upper fly.  In the middle is an eight pointed rose compass of green with white fimbration, with the cardinal points larger than the middle points.


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As stated in the opening speech by the current ICV president Zeljko Heimer, this is not vexillology.  Specifically, creating and designing flags is not vexillology.  But talking and writing about a newly designed flag flag is vexillology.  Likewise, the countless flag designs that become are not vexillology, until another person describes the flag: as within the descriptive-data collection field of vexillology.  It is a weird corner that the founder of vexillology has painted himself into and other would be vexillologists.

Further, Whitney Smith's fame as the founder of vexillology is critically dependent upon himself designing one particular flag... for Guyana.  Smith owes much of his gravitas and fame for not doing vexillology.  Ironically, the world remembers Whitney Smith best, for his non-vexilological work, which he himself does not consider to merit the inclusion within the definition of vexillology.

Smith's key footnote to world civilization is (from his perspective) as an artists, than as an academic.  The quandry for Smith is that he will always be best remembered as a vexillologist for a "non-vexillological achievement" as the primary flag designer for the nation of Guyana.  It seems quite illogical that excluding the creation of flags as a non-vexillological exercise.  Yet, Smith was able to recognize his own imperfections, he once stated it might have been a better idea to spelled this discipline as vexology or vexilology instead of vexillology.  Unto this day, vexillology catches flack from spell checks across the internet, as it is yet to be considered a real world by the matrix of machine mind, maybe a change in the spelling and definition of vexillology is in order?    

 

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