November 12, 2012
Designing a 51-State Flag
One suggested design for the 51-star American flag (image: Reddit)
Back in January, when Newt Gingrich was still a GOP hopeful, he presented the idea of making the moon into the 51st member of the United States. Fast-forward a few months: Gingrich did not win the nomination, the moon remains uncolonized, but the notion of another state was in fact a very real part of the 2012 election. In Puerto Rico, a clear majority of citizens voted for the island’s statehood.
This doesn’t mean that Puerto Rico will be promptly admitted to the union. A number of factors and decisions still stand between the vote and the final outcome. However, it does beg the question: What would a 51-star flag look like? And, for that matter, what was the design process at other moments in history when the US scaled up its territory?
The least disruptive redesign possibility for the 51-star flag (image: Wikipedia)
There’s a great five-minute clip on the archives of the wonderful StoryCorps in which the credited designer of the 50-state flag—a man named Bob Heft—describes the circumstances in which his configuration won official status as the US flag. As a high school student in the late 50s, right before Hawaii and Alaska were admitted to the union, Heft had to come up with a special project for his American History class. He decided to cut up an existing 48-star flag and sew it back together to create a 50-star flag (“I had never sewn in my life,” Heft says, “and since making the flag of our country, I’ve never sewn again.”). The stunt earned him a B- from a teacher who believed he didn’t know how many states the country had.
51 stars arranged in a circle (image: Reddit)
Heft submitted his design to the White House, alongside more than a thousand other ideas for the 50-star flag, and while there were a few others that shared the same concept, Heft’s was credited as being the official one. (His teacher changed his grade to an A.) After his moment of the national stage, Heft spent his life as a teacher and small-town mayor in Michigan, where he died in 2009, allegedly in possession of a copyright for several other flag designs, including a 51-star and 60-star version (presumably that scenario did not include the moon as one of the other nine new states).
A modern approach to 51 stars (image: Reddit)
The kind of unsolicited crowdsourcing that occurred in 1958 is of course nothing compared to the number of designs likely to be generated in 2012, with Adobe Creative Suite ready to generate perfectly identical stars in precisely symmetrical formations. Reddit users got started right away after Puerto Rico’s vote, and designs are popping up elsewhere across the Internet. The irregularity of the number makes for some interesting solution, probably the best one being a star-spangled Pac-Man eating star-spangled pac-dots. Of course, doing this legitimately requires some math. Back in 2010 when Puerto Rico was still a few years off from the big decision, Slate did their due diligence and asked a mathematician how 51 stars could best be fit into the allotted real estate. They provide a few formulas to follow, should you decide it’s your turn to be the next American flag designer.
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This is a pretty good collection of the various crowdsourced designs. Something interesting to note is that Mr. Heft’s original 51 star design has been passed onto the military’s Institute of Heraldry who have evidently already created some more of them.
The most likely scenario, in case of Puerto Rico’s or any other territory’s statehood, is the Institute of Heraldry will be the one to do the actual flag changeover.
Of course public opinion will factor in. One thing we found when doing a poll here locally, is a design that does not drastically differ from what we have now is the preferred choice. The most common reason given is that the idea would be easier to sell to the American people this way. You can see some of our poll online now at 51starflag.com/vote-for-a-new-design – while the circular style looks great, it does not seem to be winning.
It does not `beg the question,’ it `raises the question.’ Begging the question is the logical fallacy of assuming the premise’s truth in the course of proving it.
The PAC man design looks like it is devouring the other ‘lesser’ states.
Couldn’t we just let Texas go, take in Puerto Rico, and leave the flag as is?
What we really need to do is break California into 2 states and bring PR in at the same time so we have 52 states – a nice even number to work with.
California is too big and too powerful (yet broke) in it’s current configuration.
I think the Pacman design is hilarious: it explains U.S. expansionism/empire in a nutshell.
Thing is, if the flag design is altered to accommodate 51 states, may as well design it to accommodate even more stars in the future. Perhaps client puppet states can count as well with smaller stars? Like the U.S.’s newest conquests, Iraq and Afghanistan? Perhaps the flag could be like every other thing in our culture, and ridden with corporate sponsor logos stamped everywhere?
There is a problem almost half a million people left the Puerto Rico plebisicte ballot blank. Statehood is not a majority in Puerto Rico. RICANS dont want statehood
“Beg the question” doesn’t mean what you think it means