There was actually a big discussion about the new Minnesota flag design in the graphic designer lounge over at LinkedIn. No one is happy about it, for many reasons: 1) the government requested designers submit “on spec” (without pay) in the form of a contest to pick a winner. Can you think of any other vendor or contractor who submits completed work (not just a proposal for work, but a submission of the final work) to the government for no pay? So hundreds of professional designers submitted work on spec—let this be a lesson to them. 2) a well-established and talented professional designer had created about 5 versions of a new flag and state seal and posted them to his website. That was his choice, but it should be known that every single design submitted was a poor ripoff of the truly beautiful work that he had done, including the final version.
the only reason I am able to translate the final design selected is because I had read the other designer’s explanation of his solutions. The requirements in the brief included a depiction of the North Star, as Minnesota is known as The North Star State. They also wanted reference to its 10,000 lakes, and a depiction of its Scandinavian heritage. So many of the designs included depictions of the single white star as a Scandinavian quilted star design in a dark blue field, in addition to the lake blue and grass green colors to represent the lakes and farmland.