What Flag Design Can Teach Us About User Experience
For today’s post I have to confess something, I really enjoy good design. I appreciate good design and love seeing good design in my daily life. Whether it’s seeing a delightful infographic or a beautifully constructed building, good design simply speaks for itself.
Unfortunately, good design is hard work and a lot of our world is simply swimming in terrible design, the internet doubly so. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run across a website that looks like it hasn’t been touched since the nineties. You know the kind I’m talking about- the ones that still have neon green backgrounds, are plastered with useless images, and use Comic Sans for their font. Bleh.
That’s why, when I stumbled across a TED Talk by Roman Mars (who also hosts a podcast that I listen to called 99% Invisible) all about flag design, I was enthralled. In his talk he mentions a pamphlet called Good Flag, Bad Flag How to Design a Great Flag that brings up five basic rules to create an outstanding flag for any organization or place. What was great about these five basic rules is that they could be applied to just about anything we interact with. The rules are:
- Keep It Simple
- Use Meaningful Symbolism
- Use 2-3 Basic Colors
- No Lettering Or Seals
- Be Distinctive
So for today’s post we’re going to dive in to these rules and see what we can learn from designing flags and use it to create a good user experience on your website. Let’s get started.
1. Keep it Simple
“A flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory”
In flag design, simplicity is king. People need to be able to recognize the flag from great distances and any miniscule details that are placed on it will be unreadable and muddle the entire concept. Many flags have complicated seals or banners, and very few of them can be read from a distance. These are bad designs.
Unfortunately, many websites also feature these bad design elements. Complicated logos and designs that muddle the concept of the website will turn off your customers. Remember,the world has changed since the rise of mobile web surfing. Customers have gotten used to websites that they can browse with their thumbs. Tiny text, impossible-to-click navigation, and oversized advertisements will kill any customer’s desire to fight with your website whether it’s on a phone or desktop. Instead, a simple website design, with easy to navigate pages, is the ticket to a good user experience.
2. Use Meaningful Symbolism
“The flag’s images, colors, or patterns should relate to what it symbolizes.”
For all you word nerds out there, you’ll know what I mean when I say that a flag is used synecdochically. For everyone else, it simply means that a flag designed to stand for a larger whole. For example, the U.S. flag is designed to stand for the entire country, and the same goes for every other flag in the world. However, some flags use symbolism better than others. Remembering the first point of keeping the design simple, the symbolism should carry weight but not be complicated, so to speak. For example, The Flag for the Iroquois Confederacy is mentioned in Good Flag Bad Flag because the design represents the “five tribes since before 1600”on top of a background of the traditional blue of the wampum shell beads. These symbols have deep meaning to the establishment of the country, and carries a deep attachment for the people who are represented by it.
The same goes for your website. Your website is only a small part of what your business is, the images you use and how you display them should accurately represent your business as a whole and generate an attachment for your customers. If you use meaningless images that aren’t related to your company or what you do, people will be confused about what exactly your company does and will not have a firm idea of whether your business can help them.
3. Use 2-3 Basic Colors
“Limit the number of colors on the flag to three, which contrast well and come from the standard color set.”
This point does not need much explanation. If the flag is a hodgepodge of colors everywhere, the whole design is confusing and distracting.
When designing your website, you should keep this rule in mind. Having your website be seven different types of plaid makes for a disjointed and confusing website. Also, if all the color changes are happening in the background, your text is going to be difficult to read and your customers, again, won’t want to spend the time fighting with your website to get basic information about who you are.
4. No Lettering Or Seals
“Never use writing or any kind of organizational seal.”
On tons of flags throughout the world, the designers routinely just slap their country or state seal on the center of it and plaster the place name on the flag. The problem with the seals that are normally on flags is that they cannot be seen when it’s on a flag that is flapping in the wind, same for the text.
While you can’t eliminate text on your website, you should definitely take a hard look at your website to make sure that every piece of text on your website is readable and necessary to the design of your webpage. Much like the points above, this is all about making the experience of your website as delightful for your customers as possible.
5. Be Distinctive
“Avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections. “
This rule is one of the easiest to recognize but the most difficult to apply. Obviously you can tell when a flag looks the same as another. Even the same style like the state flags that just have their seals in the center of the banner are an easy-to-recognize bad design decision that are a dime a dozen. From a distance, can you really see much of a difference between the flag of New Hampshire and the flag of Nebraska?
The internet is a big place, and in order to stand out from the crowd your website needs to be distinctive. If your website looks just like your competitors’, why would a visitor think you’re anything special when there are websites like yours at every turn? To avoid this problem, you should invest the time to design a beautiful and distinctive website. Empower your employees to build something beautiful and not only will your employees be proud of your website, your visitors will keep coming back.
Go Forth And Design Better!
With these rules in mind, making a better designed world is in your grasp. If you design a great user experience, your customers will convert and you can be responsible for a more beautiful internet.
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