About Flag Maker

A free flag maker that draws national-style flags in your browser and hands you files that are ready to print, publish or drop into a game.

What it does

  • 28 layouts built from the divisions real flags use: bands, stripes, canton, Nordic and centred crosses, saltire, hoist triangle, diagonal splits and more.
  • 197 country flags to start from, drawn with the same layouts so every part stays editable.
  • Colours by picker, by hex code or from a row of common flag colours; up to 6 emblems from 172 shapes or your own picture, single or repeated as a row, ring or grid; one line of text.
  • Any ratio from presets (2:3, 3:5, 1:2, 10:19 and others) or your own, with shapes redrawn for the new proportions instead of stretched.
  • Downloads as SVG, as PNG from 600 to 9,000 pixels wide, and as a zip of Hearts of Iron IV TGA files at the game’s three sizes.
  • Undo and redo, a share link that reopens the design, a waving preview, and design notes based on NAVA’s five principles.

Who it is for

People building fictional countries for novels, tabletop games and NationStates; students and teachers doing “design your own flag” projects; modders who need flag files at exact pixel sizes; and clubs and teams that want artwork to send to a flag printer.

Why we built it

We tried the flag makers that come up first in a search for “flag maker” with the same tasks: make a green, white and orange tricolour with a centred star, change the ratio, type exact colour codes, add text, download, undo, share and use it on a phone. Most managed part of it. One wiped the design when the ratio changed, another changed the colours in its share links, several had no working undo or no vector file, and on one the ads covered the canvas. This flag maker is our attempt to do the whole job in one place, with no account, ads or watermark.

How the flags are constructed

Every flag is computed from its geometry at the chosen ratio. Cross arms are one seventh of the flag height; the hoist panels of a Nordic cross stay square; a canton over 13 stripes covers seven stripes and 40% of the width; a hoist triangle is equilateral, reaching at most half the width. The preview, the SVG, every PNG and the HOI4 files are all drawn from the same SVG markup, so the download matches the screen.

How we check it

The drawing code has automated tests against constructions worked out by hand from real flag specifications: the Danish flag’s 12:4:21 cross at 28:37, the US flag’s canton at 10:19, Japan’s disc at three fifths of the height, a ring of 12 stars like the European flag. The downloaded files are checked too: pixel sizes, colours, and HOI4 TGAs at 82 × 52, 41 × 26 and 10 × 7.

What it can’t do

  • About half the country flags are simplified, because of a coat of arms, an inscription or a detail the layouts can’t draw exactly (such as Sweden’s narrower cross or the offset rows of US stars); the flag maker says what differs when you open one.
  • Only one line of text, in fonts common on Windows and Mac (other systems substitute a similar font); no curved text.
  • Emblems are flat shapes; there is no free drawing.
  • We can’t test the HOI4 files inside the game or check how a print shop reproduces your colours.
  • Very large PNGs may fail in Safari on iPhones and iPads, which caps image size; the SVG has no limit.

Credits

The 22 basic shapes, including the 11-point maple leaf, are drawn for this site. The other 150 emblems are from game-icons.net by Lorc, Delapouite and contributors, under CC BY 3.0, scaled and centred to sit on a flag. Country flag colours follow the hex values published with each flag’s Wikipedia article.

Who runs it

Flag Maker is made and run by one person, an independent developer, not a company. We have no connection to any flag printer, game publisher, government or vexillological association, and nobody pays us to mention them. The site has no ads and nothing to buy.

We use our own privacy-friendly statistics to count visits and which buttons and starting flags get used, never the designs you make. The privacy policy lists exactly what is recorded and has a switch to turn it off.

Corrections

If a flag draws wrong, a download fails or something on this site is out of date, please tell us through the contact page. Paste a share link if you can; it shows us your exact design.