Flag Design Tutorial (Using Microsoft Paint)

When designing your own flag, a good place to start is looking at other already designed flags in Band Catalogs. I recommend Band Shoppe or McCormick's catalog. They both have websites you can look at for flag designs.

Flag Design Shapes: There are many variations of flag shapes that you can use when designing a flag, but remember that your show is in your creative control. So, if you don't find a flag shape you like, you can come up with your own shape.




What to use to Design your Flag: A great way to visualize your flag and it's colors is to use Microsoft Paint. Microsoft Paint comes standard on any PC running Windows. To access Paint, go to Start>Programs>Accessories>Paint. Open the Program and use either the line tool, the box tool, or the pencil tool to draw the shape of your flag. Next, use the same tools to draw the design in the interior of the flag.

In the image below, we use the box tool to draw the rectangle shape of the flag, then we used the line tool to draw the straight lines within the flag.



After you've drawn the outline of your flag design, now you can start to color it. Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the different sections of your flag with the colors you want to use. (Tip: You can double click on the colors in the color palette below to create a custom color)




Now, you can play with the colors until you come up with the perfect color combination for your flag. (For more information on what colors mean, Click Here). Below, we copied our flag and pasted four different version, using the paint bucket to change the flag colors. To copy your flag use the selection tool (above the paint bucket) and select your flag. Next copy it (ctrl + C). Now paste the image (ctrl + V). Then, move the pasted selection away from your original flag.




After you've come up with the perfect design, Print it out and show it to your band director. After it's been approved find the colors that you want in a Catalog. Most catalogs will send you swatches of all the fabric colors that they have for free. Most of the catalogs also provide the service of creating the flags for you in the colors that you want...as long as it's their design. This can be quite expensive, ranging from $15-$70 per flag!



Source : http://www.colorguardcentral.com/howdesignflagtut.html