This week I have two flags that beautifully illustrate how simple flag design can be whilst still being powerfully expressive. Both examples being nothing more complicated than a field division, one type of charge and no more than three colours.

Starting with Penn, the easiest decision was what charge to add. The name Penn is probably derived from the old Welsh word for hill, this hill likely being the one upon which St Bartholomew’s Church stands. The attributed coat of arms for St Bartholomew is that of three daggers/swords, which has duly also become the badge of the Penn Cricket team. Thus the charge for the flag was decided.

Penn Flag

I did become a little stuck when trying to decide on the colour for the field. Blue is used by the cricket team yet red would have been a nice nod to the Welsh associations the town has through its name. As such I felt a field division might be the best way of utilising both colours. To reference the ‘hill’ meaning behind its name I decided that a diagonal division would give the impression of a slope. The slope heads to the top right to mirror the north east rise to the real hill. The lower ‘hill’ section is coloured red, to signify that the word is welsh whilst the ‘upper’ part is given a blue from the cricket badge which errs towards a medium indigo-blue.

Blackheath was a similarly simple flag to design, however in contrast with the decisions taken on the Penn flag, the colours were easy to decide upon but the detail in the charge required more thought.

During my research there did not seem to be much in the way of representative symbols or colours for the town, bar those employed by Blackheath Town football club, so I decided to use these in some way. Their strips are orange tops with green shorts, which effectively decided both the colour for the flag and how to decide the field – a horizontal division with an orange upper and a green lower half.

Blackheath Flag

The charge appeared at first to be an easy choice, the club badge bearing a Blackbird which provides a reference to the towns name. The problem arose when I had to choose how to represent the blackbird, as the club badges depiction is quite realistic and not overly heraldic. I decided to draw a heraldic form but I felt the need to modify the birds pose, as I was changing the art style to suit a clearer, more dynamic medium I felt that the pose of the bird should similarly be clearer and more dynamic. As such I elected to have the bird with its wings raised as though preparing for flight. If this is seen as sacrilege it can easily be changed but I am hopeful that my reasoning is not only sensible but produces a more effective design for the medium of a flag.

The final touch was to place the bird on the flag, which I did on the upper half in the centre. This was simply as the black colour of the bird did not show up effectively against the green, plus this novel positioning makes the flag a little more unique and distinctive. Once again proving that very simple designs can be just as worthwhile as their more intricate relations!

Article is written by Phillip Tibbets, researcher of Heraldic Art and co-founder of Heartland Heritagewear