

Free Flag Icons - timparker
https://www.gosquared.com/resources/2400-flags

======
hp
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 trying to have a list
of all flags, there's no way to do that without making various groups angry.

I don't doubt that there's a "right" answer to all disputes over flags but do
you really know what all the disputes are and want to arbitrate them as part
of developing your software ...

Deliberately not digging up specific disputes because the whole point is, if
you have to ask what they are or if you start debating them case by case,
maybe this wasn't a can of worms that needed opening.

(also, the last time I encountered this was long enough ago that I'm sure the
relevant examples have changed, and I never understood them well to begin
with. But it was clear that flags poked more than one political group in the
eye.)

~~~
hendi_
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 awesome, and if I ever have a
legit use case for flags in a GUI I'll definitely use them. Thanks for sharing
under a free license!

~~~
Xion
How do you indicate a language in icon-like manner then? Is using the textual
ISO codes the only safe option?

~~~
hendi_
It depends.

First of all, flags are really bad for languages since there's an n:m
relationship. Which flag would you use for "English"? The USA flag? The Flag
of England? The Union Jack?

If you offer only "English" then depending on if you write "center" or
"centre" you may offend either USA or British people. Same for "German", where
a Swiss may be offended to see "Straße" while a German could be offended by
seeing "Strasse". Of course most people won't care about that and I bet most
Brits are used to see "color" without a 'u' on the internet, but from
experience I can say that there are people who care about or even get offended
by that.

But even if using textual representation for languages like "English" is not
perfect, offering every language-country possibility (en-US, en-GB, en-??...)
isn't a viable route in most cases since there are way to many combinations.

Just think of yourself (assuming you're from the USA): would you rather see
the word "English" in a language selector or the Flag of England?

So what should you do? I'd suggest going with textual representations like
"English" or the ISO 639-x shortcodes ("en" or "eng"). Being German that's
easy to say for me, and I know a handful of people who'd like me to
distinguish between de_DE, de_AT and de_CH.

So as I've said: it depends :-)

------
rhplus
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 layout, aspect ratios and colors and to
the clarity of symbols and text.

Even more importantly, never use a flag to represent a language choice.

(* most major websites do avoid using flags, but one notable exception is
Apple, which completely corrupts every single flag with their own shiny style:
<http://www.apple.com/choose-your-country/> ...)

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

~~~
Strom
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-...](http://valitsus.ee/et/riigikantselei/riigi-ja-
omavalitsuste-symbolid/eesti-lipp)

~~~
timparker
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.

~~~
digisign
Agree about aspect ratios, but we should expect rgb colors to be accurate.

~~~
timparker
If you check out the flat flags the colors are exact, obviously the styled
ones have subtle shadowing etc, and are probably out by a very small margin.

~~~
vacri
I checked out Estonia from above and the colour doesn't match the examples on
Wikipedia. I've also checked out the Australian flag, and it's eyeball-
different - the blue in the real flag is closer to navy blue. The blue should
be #002B7F, but a colour picker tells me that the 64x64 flat flag has a blue
of #003399.

It's not a big problem in my opinion - no-one should be overly hung up about
minor anomalies like that for web icons - but it's not true to say the colours
are exact.

------
crazygringo
For people saying "don't use flags", and "especially not for languages"...

I totally agree in theory, but...

In a lot of interfaces, having something visual helps a lot. _Especially_ when
you need to pick something from a list where you don't even know what language
the user speaks!

Obviously, you can present a text list like "English (American)", "Português
(Brasil)", "አማርኛ", "贛語", but it can look kind of ugly, how do you decide to
sort them, etc.

Plus, a lot of times the language _is_ tied to a country, because each country
has their spelling and grammar differences, etc. That's why many times you
don't see "Portuguese" in language lists, but rather "Portuguese (Portugal)"
and "Portuguese (Brazil)" -- because there's no such thing as a general-
purpose Portuguese.

So while flags aren't perfect, a lot of the time they help far more than they
hurt. In a perfect world, there would actually be language-specific icons that
everyone recognized. Suggestions, anybody?

~~~
jarek
What flag do you suggest we use for es_US and fr_CA? Or how to distinguish
de_CH and fr_CH?

~~~
shakesbeard
Common practice seems to be using a half Swiss/half German flag for de_CH, and
half Swiss/half French flag for fr_CH or just the Swiss flag for both
languages.

------
morsch
Under what license are they released? There is no licensing information on the
page, or on the parent "freebies" page, or in the zip file itself.

~~~
simontabor
They're MIT, will be adding the license in a bit

------
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.

------
Sembiance
No vector format? Don't get me wrong, these flags are appreciated, but to
spend all that time making them in a bitmap format? Kinda seems like a bit of
a waste, since flags seem PERFECT for vector format.

~~~
timparker
If you want vector flags use wikiepedias SVG flags. These are made to be pixel
perfect at different sizes, something that wouldn't work if we just batched
them all from vectors.

<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sovereign-state_flags>

------
dagw
Wow, awesome. I'll definitely be using this. In fact this is so awesome I
actually gave my real email address.

~~~
atas
You didn't have to give an email address, btw. So no point in giving a fake
one anyway. But I think someone willing to bypass "registration" would not
impulsively submit a fake address, but rather would have read the small print.

------
BUGHUNTER
Thanks for the contribution. It would be great to have all flags, especially
the small ones, in ONE file to avoid x requests on sites with many flags. Here
is one idea: offer a service for people who need multiple country flags on
their site to generate the one big flag picture set they need for their
specific set of flags - one big country-selector that spits out a big
flags.png after submit would be a great promo! Thanks!

~~~
timparker
Thanks! We'll be adding it to github in the next few days with this feature :)

------
pilsetnieks
It would help tremendously if the files were named by, say, ISO 2-letter
country codes (where it applies).

~~~
timparker
There are two folders within the zip, one has them named in this way :)

~~~
pilsetnieks
Oh, right, thanks, that's exactly what I was thinking about :)

------
uvdiv
What were the criteria for including some disputed states (South Ossetia,
Somaliland) while excluding others (Transnistria, Azawad)?

~~~
timparker
When we made them we used this > <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sovereign-
state_flags> and a bit of >
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_unrecognized_stat...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_unrecognized_states)

~~~
neilk
Thanks for making these, but I wish you would have also acknowledged the
sources in your LICENSE.txt.

As for the license itself -- even though I used to work on licensing and UI
for Wikimedia Commons, I acknowledge this can be quite confusing, so I
sympathize. I've rewritten this comment a couple of times already.

It's not clear to me if you can re-release everything under any single
license. It's also unclear to me if you can assert copyright over the whole
thing, as you must if you are going to use a CC license or the BSD-style
license you used.

However, I would suggest that whatever you are doing, you should not
arbitrarily reassign the work to a BSD license. They are not designed for
graphics, since they require publication of the license wherever the graphic
is used. Imagine if you wanted to use the icon on a postcard; according to the
license you'd have to include the license text on the postcard. If you want
these to be used widely Creative Commons Zero is much better... assuming you
can assert copyright for the whole thing as a derivative work.

<http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>

The really pedantically correct thing would be to list the licenses for each
and every flag, but I acknowledge that would be no fun at all, and as far as I
know Wikimedia Commons doesn't have tools to make that easy with large
collections.

Sorry for the legalese - I think you did a great thing here, I'm just trying
to help you share it with others.

~~~
uvdiv
I'm curious, how did wikipedia get copyright over the designs of national
flags? What right to they have to attribution?

~~~
neilk
Wikipedia took over the world while nobody was noticing. Didn't you get the
memo?

You are a bit confused here, but I don't blame you. Here is the legal
situation as far as I understand it (IANAL, standard disclaimers apply).

The Wikimedia Foundation hosts content on its servers provided by the
community. Usually, the individual contributors own the copyright to all the
content. And when they submit content to a WMF site, like Wikipedia, they
explicitly agree to license the work under terms such that others can use it.
(I am ignoring the case of fair use for now).

Certain kinds of contributions, however, are not original to the contributor.
This gets confusing because then you have to prove that it's okay to reuse.

Depictions of national flags are often ineligible for copyright, or are
explicitly granted to the public domain, in their country of origin. However,
"public domain" has no legal meaning internationally.

The CC0 license is really designed for creators who want to dedicate their
work to be freely copied, like public domain, but want something that is
legally meaningful.

But - there was a large collection of flags licensed CC0 which became the
basis of the Wikimedia Commons collection. Other flags have specific
justifications for why they are public domain, sometimes quoting laws from
specific countries. This is the good thing about Wikimedia Commons, it doesn't
force you into any straightjacket to explain how the license works. But that
also means that everything's kind of a mess if you want to get a straight
answer to a question like "under what license could I republish all the flags
on Wikimedia Commons?"

And that's where it sits. If you squint, everything's not so bad. But maybe
Wikimedia Commons should relicense _all_ the flags as ineligible for copyright
-- it would make things a lot simpler.

Of course, because copyright is taking over the world, I would not be
surprised if there are some nations that would insist they _do_ hold the
copyright to their flags. For instance, the EC insists it holds the copyright
to their flag and the Euro symbol. Maaaaadness.

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Europe.svg#Li...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Europe.svg#Licensing)

[http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/euro/cash/symbol/index_e...](http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/euro/cash/symbol/index_en.htm)

------
ilija139
I have heard about GoSquared, but have never tried it before. I just signed up
and I'm truly amazed. The dashboard view is really useful feature. IMO this is
as good as it gets for real-time website analytics. Awesome work guys!

------
cheeaun
I think it would be awesome if all these flag icons are hosted on a CDN and we
can all link to it.

~~~
pjriot
That's a disturbing sense of entitlement. The creators spent 100+ hours on
this work and you're asking them to cover the bandwidth costs of hosting it
for you?

~~~
Xion
Eh, I don't think (s)he meant authors should do that. I suppose it's only an
idea, shared here with hopes that maybe some HNer will pick it up.

~~~
pjriot
Fair enough. I must just be grumpy this morning.

------
Zenst
I find selecting country via flags of a global map to not only be alot quicker
than a drop down list, but also more intuative. As somebody who lives in
Britian/United Kingdom, then selecting via a flag or mini world map is much
easier. Reason being from my point of view is often there is no UK/British
option and your slotted in as American English in some forms of language
selection. Now if the application ror website wish's to do that behind the
scene then fine, but with lists you tend not to have that mapping and on flags
or a global map your none the wiser. Also educational value and easier upon
all cultures that way, some might prefer there drop down lists on the right,
some on the left so this avoids that. All in all it offers more positives as
apposed to negatives over dropdown lists for country/flag selection.

So the option to have icons you can freely use without accidently stepping
upoon somebodies IP can only be a good thing and counter any arguments about
flag copyrights and images. Amazing how even the simplest common items can be
copyrighted - swiss clock being one even Apple slipped up upon. So some free
ones are always good.

------
highace
How long did they take to make?

~~~
timparker
The flags themselves, around 100hrs! We updated the styling and improvements
this week which took a few more hours.

------
chucknelson
Is anyone else surprised that in the age of "retina" displays, these only go
up to 64px?

~~~
joeblau
One of the tags says "vector" so they may be able to produce higher resolution
files. That said, I think the @2x should be in there if people want to use
these for mobile.

~~~
visualidiot
They are @2x up until 32px.

------
sailfast
As someone that often designs things that are country / geographically
specific this is a great collection. I also like it as an idea to drive
traffic to your site. You're on my radar now and the other freebies look
pretty slick too. Thanks! Definitely made the right impression.

------
jblz
Here's another set that goes up to 128px: <http://icondrawer.com/flag-
icons.php>

They're free, but require attribution unless you buy a 'royalty-free license.'

------
visualidiot
Wow, they're beautiful!

------
adaml_623
Had to look up this one when I saw it was included:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Mars>

------
munyukim
I have been looking for high quality flag icons like these; I would be
definitely using them in the future. Thanks!

------
bustaarama
Thanks!

Can't find any informations regarding a license (usage) ?!

~~~
indiecore
Don't know if you saw above but they are MIT license and they are going to
update the DL files later today.

~~~
timparker
Yep, sorry it was missing from the start. Should be in the .zip now!

------
timparker
Change log + details added as a .txt in the .zip

~~~
rolux
Just to let you know that the current .zip doesn't include the change log,
just the license. (Caching issue at gosquared?)

------
halayli
These guys have bluntly copied woopra.com

~~~
visualidiot
You're right. It was a Friday evening, we got our blunts out, played some
Afroman, and said "hey, we're going to stop doing exactly what we've been
doing since 2006 and we're going to bluntly copied woopra.com". It's a shame
we had to be exposed like this.

