Spirit of 1994

[Mike_Oettle]

After a long wait, I have finally been able to make some decisions concerning the tartan I designed last year based on the South African flag.
I have altered the colours to conform more closely to those actually used in the flag:

I had been waiting to hear from Fred Brownell, the retired State Herald of South Africa, who designed the flag in 1993. When I phoned him a few weeks back, he told me that his wife had suffered a heart attack in September, and that he had been fully occupied in caring for her. As he spoke, he said, she was able to walk around by herself once more, but she was still in need of a lot of rest.
I had proposed to call the tartan Brownell’s Flag, but he felt that his name ought to be left out of it. He proposed the name Flag Tartan instead, and gave me the go-ahead to register it.
When I wrote to the Bureau of Heraldry in Pretoria I was informed that the Heraldry Act, under which the Bureau operates, gives it no authority to register tartans. It could not permit me to design a tartan based on the national flag, but it could also not forbid it.
This means I can register the tartan in Edinburgh, provided my wife gives me the nod to pay the £70 (R763, $114) registration fee. So far, she has balked at the idea.
But I have finally picked a suitable name for it: Spirit of 1994.
It represents the high hopes we had for our country when we went to the polls in that year to elect a democratic government under a new Constitution.
Let me know what you fellows think of it.
Regards,
Mike

[Chirs]

I like it. I'm not tartan expert but I think it's bright and nicely balanced. The white lines seem a little overwhelming for me (remembering that I am no expert). I'm wondering what it would look like without the white outlining the red...

[Mike_Oettle]

Hi, Chris, and thanks for your positive comment.
In the flag, the white and the blue are separated from the green by white fimbriations, while the black is separated from the green by a yellow fimbriations. So these colours are essential to the tartan design, too.
Regards,
Mike

[SlackerDrummer]

Mike,

I like the idea, but I think the color arrangement could be improved to more closely resemble the flag. By switching the blue and green on yours and alternating the wide (now) blue stripe with the wide red stripe, you can have the colors match up exactly how the flag does:



To give it a little more pizazz, you could also add some white pinstripes in the middle of the red and blue sections, like this:



Regards,

[Mike_Oettle]

Hi, Ken – I am unable to make sense of your suggestions, because the images have been replaced on my screen by a picture of a frog on an ice block – many images posted from the US on X Marks have this problem for me (and I am not sure in what other countries the problem exists).
Perhaps you should link your pictures from Photobucket.
Regards,
Mike

[SlackerDrummer]

I uploaded the images to my album here and edited my previous post. See if that helps.

[Mike_Oettle]

Hi, Ken – you have some useful ideas there, but now the red and blue are too large, and the pinstripes don’t work for me.
Regards,
Mike

[SlackerDrummer]

Hi, Ken – you have some useful ideas there, but now the red and blue are too large, and the pinstripes don’t work for me.

I think the proportion of blue and red are not so much too big in the non-pinstriped version. They are after all fairly large swaths on the flag. In your version, which takes its colors from the flag, colors abut which do not in the flag and the green sections have far too much prominence. If the goal is to mimic the flag, I think my top version does a better job in its order of the colors. You could of course adjust the widths to suit your liking. If it isn't the goal to mimic the flag, but rather just to use the color-scheme, I'd like to see some more interesting patterns than just largish squares with "fimbriations". Just my two cents.

[davidlpope]

I think you should make it look more like a tartan and less like a flag. By that, I mean you should choose a "background color" and then vary the widths of the other colors so that it is not so uniform. Here's a very rough idea of what I mean:

[davidlpope]

To give it a little more pizazz, you could also add some white pinstripes in the middle of the red and blue sections, like this:

Reminds me of the Caledonia tartan: