Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Free Flag Icons

gosquared.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 79 posts

Re: Free Flag Icons

#41

Post by bbx »

hendi_ wrote: post #32
hp wrote: post #28

Using flags in your visual design can be tempting but in my experience it's a bad idea. The problem is that certain flags force you to "take sides" in political disputes that you likely aren't aware of and don't understand. You'll inadvertently make one side very angry with you, and you won't even really know what political statement you accidentally made. It's OK if you stick to flags you know but if you start tryin…

And even worse is using them to indicate languages. There are countries with more than one language (e.g. Belgium which Dutch, French and German) and there are languages which are used in more than one country (think us.png vs gb.png for "English"). So, rule of thumb: - never use flags to indicate a language - use flags to indicate a country only after thinking twice EDIT: Nonetheless, this flag collection looks awes…

One issue I've also encountered is websites you use languages to indicate countries.

For example, I often appreciate browsing a shop in English (better content, more comments), so I select it from the dropdown, but end up browsing the US or UK shop, whereas I'm in France.

One website that gets it right is Zara: https://www.zara.com/ You select the store (country) and the language independently.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#42

Post by ComputerGuru »

hp wrote: post #28

Using flags in your visual design can be tempting but in my experience it's a bad idea. The problem is that certain flags force you to "take sides" in political disputes that you likely aren't aware of and don't understand. You'll inadvertently make one side very angry with you, and you won't even really know what political statement you accidentally made. It's OK if you stick to flags you know but if you start tryin…

This is so very true. You really can't win this one. Even if you're 100% not biased, your clients most definitely will be.

You can put all the flags up, disputed or not. Then you have people mad at you for putting up the disputed ones whom they view as being an insult. You can remove the disputed ones, and people will accuse of wanting oppression and being anti-freedom. Even when you avoid this problem, you have the problem of people not wanting to see a particular flag anywhere, dispute or no dispute.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#43

Post by [deleted] »

visualidiot wrote: post #33
rhplus wrote: post #31

A bit of advice: avoid using flags altogether in your user interface unless you really, really need to refer to specific national/political entities. There's far too much room for error or offense, whether you're incorrectly assigning the wrong flag to a geographical region or have not represented the flag correctly. I haven't looked at the flag set, but I'm betting there are errors related to the correctness of layo…

A bit of advice: actually look at something before judging it. If you'd downloaded, you'd know that they all look correct.

[deleted]

Re: Free Flag Icons

#44

Post by ComputerGuru »

The website flags these as "vector" - they are gorgeous and I'm wondering if the actual SVG versions are available?

If you want one particular flag (instead of many for language purposes), I think these are very fine.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#45

Post by Strom »

visualidiot wrote: post #33
rhplus wrote: post #31

A bit of advice: avoid using flags altogether in your user interface unless you really, really need to refer to specific national/political entities. There's far too much room for error or offense, whether you're incorrectly assigning the wrong flag to a geographical region or have not represented the flag correctly. I haven't looked at the flag set, but I'm betting there are errors related to the correctness of layo…

A bit of advice: actually look at something before judging it. If you'd downloaded, you'd know that they all look correct.

I downloaded it and looked at Estonia's flag. It's all wrong. I don't personally care, it looks close enough, but some people might take issue with this.

The ratio is 3:2, but the correct ratio is 11:7. The colors are wrong, both the gradients and flat versions. The correct RGB colors are well defined. [1]

[1] Colors and ratio are defined on this page http://valitsus.ee/et/riigikantselei/riigi-ja-omavalitsuste-...

Re: Free Flag Icons

#47

Post by kordless »

hp wrote: post #28

Using flags in your visual design can be tempting but in my experience it's a bad idea. The problem is that certain flags force you to "take sides" in political disputes that you likely aren't aware of and don't understand. You'll inadvertently make one side very angry with you, and you won't even really know what political statement you accidentally made. It's OK if you stick to flags you know but if you start tryin…

I had a startup where we put countries in a pulldown. The country list was pulled verbatim by me from one of Google's properties, which I assumed to be up to date. Within a few days I had several emails from people in Macao saying the name of the country was wrong and needed to be fixed. The entry had some mention of China in parenthesis and it wasn't until I researched a bit further I realized it was a 'special administrative region' of China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_administrative_region

While I had no horse in the race, I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about someone else's culture. Perhaps it's not so much taking sides as it is better understanding all the people who are involved.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#48

Post by timparker »

Strom wrote: post #45
visualidiot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of advice: actually look at something before judging it. If you'd downloaded, you'd know that they all look correct.

I downloaded it and looked at Estonia's flag. It's all wrong. I don't personally care, it looks close enough, but some people might take issue with this. The ratio is 3:2, but the correct ratio is 11:7. The colors are wrong, both the gradients and flat versions. The correct RGB colors are well defined. [1] [1] Colors and ratio are defined on this page http://valitsus.ee/et/riigikantselei/riigi-ja-omavalitsuste-...

It's a set of flag icons for the web, it's not to hang off the government building.

If we did exact aspect ratios for every flag they would all be different and look shit. We tried to be as exact as possible with colors and shapes, if they don't work for you guys or are not close enough then you don't need to use them.

Not aimed directly at you, just at anyone who doesn't find them precise enough.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#49

Post by rwhitman »

hp wrote: post #28

Using flags in your visual design can be tempting but in my experience it's a bad idea. The problem is that certain flags force you to "take sides" in political disputes that you likely aren't aware of and don't understand. You'll inadvertently make one side very angry with you, and you won't even really know what political statement you accidentally made. It's OK if you stick to flags you know but if you start tryin…

I've had google geocoder mark things as serbia instead of kosovo which resulted in angry emails accusing me of deliberately taking sides. No idea that I even had data in that region

Re: Free Flag Icons

#50

Post by digisign »

timparker wrote: post #48
Strom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downloaded it and looked at Estonia's flag. It's all wrong. I don't personally care, it looks close enough, but some people might take issue with this. The ratio is 3:2, but the correct ratio is 11:7. The colors are wrong, both the gradients and flat versions. The correct RGB colors are well defined. [1] [1] Colors and ratio are defined on this page http://valitsus.ee/et/riigikantselei/riigi-ja-omavalitsuste-...

It's a set of flag icons for the web, it's not to hang off the government building. If we did exact aspect ratios for every flag they would all be different and look shit. We tried to be as exact as possible with colors and shapes, if they don't work for you guys or are not close enough then you don't need to use them. Not aimed directly at you, just at anyone who doesn't find them precise enough.

Agree about aspect ratios, but we should expect rgb colors to be accurate.
Post reply on HN