The Liberian County Flags Animated
Channel: Geobica
Date: 2021-03-12

County names are in captions.
I love the Liberian county flags because they manage to be a genuinely unique and memorable set of flags for relatively small regions without falling into many of the pitfalls that tend to plague flags made for smaller regions of other countries. Contrast these with the flags of lesser known cities and regions in other countries and you'll see that the vast majority are forgettable seals on a monochromatic background. Liberia, on the other hand, actually tries to incorporate local symbolism in colorful designs, which is far better for creating a memorable and meaningful flag that you could recognize from a distance than just throwing a seal on there.
The flags have become a bit infamous among the vexillology community for being crudely drawn (which is what got me thinking about them), and while a few of them could certainly be cleaned up in their artwork, I don't actually think major changes would be an improvement at all for most of them. I've seen several non-Liberian vexillologists' attempts to design cleaner versions of the flags, but in all of these that I've seen, they tend to abstract the artwork into basic shapes, which may be cleaner looking, but has far less meaning. I think this is something to watch out for when ever designing flags for small regions: Compared to something like a national flag, there's going to be less local symbols that could still be recognizable once abstracted, so it's often better to leave those symbols as more specific drawings, even if they look unpolished, rather than lose that aspect and be left with just another geometric design that could really represent anything. I think far too often smaller cities and counties just give up on designing flags and resort to a seal on a bedsheet just because they don't have the same sort of local symbols that work as abstractions like more well known flags, and so I commend Liberia for actually giving it a go.

Music: The US Navy Band's performance of All Hail, Liberia, Hail!