Top 5 national flags I consider the worst, ugliest or most uncreative imaginable

As a flag enthusiast it was easy falling in love with the most beautiful national flags (which includes Australia and New Zealand flags), all because there are so many totally uninspired, lazy and ugly ones. So many countries never took the effort to make their design stand out and make them look like any other existing flags that have been around for ages. And then there is the bottom of the barrel, that are beyond ugly. Since everyone has their own lists and taste (some people actually like the flags I am going to describe), I thought of describing my own five. Now don't worry here, as I wont include state flags, city flags or other flags, so the notorious Liberian county flags won't get a mention now. Country flags only, and those that are officially in use to date.

Number 5: the flag of Singapore

The current design of the Singapura has put me on the wrong track for such a long long time, assuming it was an Islamic country. But how could I tell, the crescent and stars look exactly like that in any other Islamic flag with this symbol in it. It was adopted in 1959 and I don't think it was a groundbreaking design to replace the former colonial flag. I don't like most flags with crescents in them, but including this in a terrible weak design make the atrocity levels hit through the roof. Just look at it; two horizontal bars in red and white, like Indonesia, Poland and Monaco. That's it, colonial flag out, the design that everyone wanted in, mission complete. As it was halfway down the 20th century, there was enough time to come up with a more original design. As it appears so, the already super dramatically run-of-the-mill, anything but spectacular same design of the Indonesian flag came 14 years before. And surprisingly,  the moon and the stars were later added to avoid getting mistaken with Indonesia, which is even more odd considering Indonesia are their southern neighbours.

Number 4: the flag of South Sudan

South Sudan is the worlds youngest new nation and they should welcome us with a groundbreaking new flag. I was really stunned when I saw the outcome. Now first things first. African nations follow the colours of the Pan-African flags that mostly consist of red, green and gold, but also black. It is no surprise that many African flags have these colours in them. And that's perfectly understandable,  the problem that I have with these designs is that they look like blatant copies of existing flags that have been around for many centuries, years and years and years in other continents before they were given an opportunity to design a new flag. And when they ran out of ideas they simply started copying each other. Take a look at the flag of Mali that seems exactly the same as the flag of Guinea, they just switched the order around. To add a bit of variety, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Cameroon added a trite tiny star. This doesn't look very pretty or creative in any way, but that's not to say I dislike them all. I think the Togo flag is pretty awesome though. By no means original, but cool enough to make it the best Pan-African flag around.

Now the flag of the republic of the Sudan looked very much like any other flag in the Middle East, I guess because of interconnectedness with Arab nations with the same flags of which the current design was based. Well, now that the south of Sudan has declared themselves a new nation as late as 2011, (flag was already adopted in 2005), I expected a crafty new designed spectacular marvel that we could add to our long history of world flags. Because after all, in these modern times you have special developing tools at your disposal, and access to all the historical records and knowledge in the world as well as professionals who are experienced in creating the most successful designs. In this day we no long have to sew and colour our flags by hand, but in this day and age we can print the most complex colours and designs in factories with state of the art printing equipment.  Anndd here it is, this is the result. It blew me away.



This abomination looks like it wasn't even designed by a human brain, as if the input some feed into a computer and let the computer randomly design and take patterns from existing flags and mix it all together. I don't get it. All countries in the world already have a flag for centuries and now new nations are given a chance to design something new that other countries don't have and you do exactly that! Copy other countries flags! Adding insult to injury they thought it was necessary to push the limit of colours to six, meaning that trying to understand what the colours stand for make the flag not only horrible in a visual way. The South Sudan flag now looks like a template of Kenya's with a Chevron and a star plastered over it. And even stars aren't very original anymore. That's not to say there isn't a single African flag I like, I do think Botswana's and Eswatini's look amazing. So yeah that's right, it's not called Swaziland anymore. Did you know that, I bet you need some time to get used to the new name. African countries are grandmasters at changing names, but not so much at designing good looking flags.

Number 3: the flag of Vietnam

After the war was over, north and south unified. So, I later found out the south had their own yellow flag with three red stripes in them and the north a yellow star on a red field. Sadly, they never designed a new flag from scratch and simply went with the flag of North-Vietnam, which is the most boring flag I can ever think of. There is not much to look at, and when you want to find out if the colours mean something in particular, then it wouldn't fare much better as the colour red represents struggle and bloodshed. I would say that's more reason to not have chosen this awful flag and the flag of South-Vietnam looked miles better in comparison. Couldn't they have created a flag that combined the yellow and red stripes, or merge the two flags into a good one, or at least a different type of red and yellow? When I discovered all the flags of the world as a kid, this was already my ugliest and most boring flag out of all of them and that hasn't changed much in thirty years. It could only be overtaken by any ugly flags that have been made recently.

fun fact: Despite its simplistic and very minimal looking design, the star on an empty field has been invented a century before Vietnam even created their flags. The big star flag was already in use for the Belgian Congo, West Florida and the "Bonnie Blue Flag" of the Confederate States. Even Somalia, who have the exact same flag, predate the Vietnam flag by 1 year if you don't count the exact shape of the star.

Number 2: the flag of Myanmar

Can it get worse than the flag of Vietnam? Yes, and the Vietnam's was already very bad. Behold, look out world, for the new flag of Myanmar. The old flag looked alright, what was the need to have it changed in the Lithuanian flag + Vietnam. I can't help it but seeing there is a star shaped hole in the flag. Do you see it too? They seem to have used theses colours before in the 1940s, but it was already in use by Lithuania's in the 1910s. They weren't allowed to use their colours again until the breakaway from the Soviet Union, but come on now. The new Myanmar flag was created in a time of the smartphone! Yes, that's right. Their new design is from 2010, barely a decade ago. They couldn't think of anything else?

Tie: the Maldives / Mauritania

Since they have much in common they both deserve to be in the number 1 spot. They both look hideous and appear to bear striking similar features. Let's analyze the Maldives flag first. The tiny island nation of the Maldives adopted their flag in 1965 when they gained independence from the UK. And with a population of that was likely of half of 400.000 back then, a new flag to represent their new nation was desperately needed. It was designed by the sultan Abdul Majeed, who died thirteen years before, so that goes to show that they didn't take much effort to get into the design room and come up with some smashing ideas.

Now I think we can all agree here, I read a lot on the Internet, and I've seen the flag of the Maldives  included in many top-ugliest flag lists. The red doesn't go well with green. Usually flags with green and red get around that by adding white or black, but this is beyond ugly. The surrounding border isn't seen in a lot of flags today, but since they chose red for the border it makes the flag look awful. And why is Islamic faith predominantly the main focus in the design? Is that the most important in the country? Not freedom, peace, justice, progression, achievement, harmony, natural wonders, but only Islam?? Apparently the Maldives has a history that spans over 2500 years. That's quite a long time. Why not add something from that time in the flag that has historical value, like an artifact or a relic? Why not legacy, heritage, pride, something symbolically, like a stylized emblem of something very native to the Maldives which can only be found in this archipelago. But no, it's just Islam. Done. No more questions please. Now there are three colours consisting of gold, green and red. Green usually represents Islam in any other Islamic flag, but here it was based of the earlier noted pan-African colours, which means the green represents something else. Now according to information I've found, the red stands for the willingness of the people to prize their blood, to defend their territory.

Let's now look at the 'new' flag of Mauritania. This flag looks so very similar to the flag of the Maldives that it's almost unreal. I always thought this flag is the most hideous flag I've ever seen, but they adjusted it very recently to make it even uglier. Since 2017, yes >>>that's only three years ago<<<, they thought it was essential to "update" the flag with two red bars. Why the red bars? I couldn't believe it, when I found out that the red means exactly the same as the flag of the Maldives. Namely, the willingness of the people to fight to the death for this country. Which means that these flags are very violent! If they can change the flag with the drop of a hat, why not completely redesign the flag? A unique landmark of Mauritania seems to be eye of the Sahara, wouldn't that be the best reason to include that in a new flag? Or anything else besides Islamic faith? Anyway, which of the two flags is the worst? At one hand the Mauritania flag looks at least a bit better when it is hanging vertical, but on the other hand it was updated in 2017! And the red bars now make it look even more awfull in sphere shapes pictograms. Which means you are the worlds biggest loser, or the biggest winner, depending how you look at it.

 

One more thing, one more thing. I find these news articles very amusing, in which they act like the recent flag update is their biggest achievement in the past hundred years.