Flag Making Tutorial
This will be a more technical step-by-step tutorial on how I make my flags (also a long post because I wanted to be thorough, plus I love flags lol).
The program I use is Inkscape, a free vector (.svg) editor program for pc.
I have templates set up, so the actual flag making process is pretty easy/quick.
Hotkeys/Locations/Other Reference
I'll be mentioning these options, so I thought to put them here all in one list. (They list the keyboard shortcuts first)
Snapping: magnet symbol (top right of screen), or under the adjacent arrow ◀️ symbol.
Document properties: shift+ctrl+D, or under the file menu (top left corner of screen). Display (1st tab) Guides (2nd tab) Grids (3rd tab)
Fill and Stroke: shift+ctrl+F, or under object (top of screen)
Import (Images): ctrl+i, under the file menu, or by dragging into the Inkscape window.
Save As: ctrl+shift+S, or under the file menu.
Export: shift+ctrl+E, or under the file menu.
Selector Tool: S, or cursor symbol (left side of screen). Click, or click and drag around the objects, to select them.
Locking a selection: lock symbol between the width and height boxes at the top of the screen.
Transform Selections: the width/height and x y position can be changed by typing in the X,Y,W,H boxes (near top middle of screen), or by dragging the corners/edges (resize) and inside the object (move).
Duplicate: ctrl+D.
Delete: delete key, or right click on the object.
Node Tool: N, or below the selector tool (left side of screen).
Rectangle Tool: R, or square symbol (left side of screen).
Pen Tool: B, or pen symbol (left side of screen).
Gradient Tool: G, gradient square symbol (left side of screen).
Mesh Tool: swirly square symbol (left side of screen).
Dropper Tool: D, or dropper symbol (left side of screen).
Undo: ctrl+Z.
Redo: ctrl+Y.
Creating the Template
Download Inkscape and open it, under the Time to Draw tab, click New Document.
First, snapping needs to be enabled, and under advanced mode enable grids and guide lines snapping. (This is crucial for making the stripes equally sized, spaced, and the overall flag in the right ratio.)
I'll be making a template with a 2:3 flag ratio.
Open document properties. (I like to move these types of windows to the right side.)
Under display, set the width to 42px and height to 28px.
Under guides, just click create guides around the current page.
Under grids, make sure rectangular grid is selected, and click new. (Grid units should be in px.) For the major grid line every option, change it to 2. (I also prefer to change the minor grid line color to be transparent.)
That's pretty much it, your template is done :D ! Just save it wherever you want. I like putting it in an easy-to-access flag folder, as it is needed to open it every time to make new flags.
You can use a different width / height / grid size / flag ratio if you want, these are just the numbers I'm comfortable with / used to.
Also, since this is a vector, the image can be infinitely big or small without any quality loss, so the small dimensions above don't actually translate to a low res image.
Creating the Flag
(I'll be using the rainbow flag to demonstrate.)
Start by having the template open.
You can import images (like .png/.jpg files) to color pick / reference if you want. Said images can be transformed (resized/moved) by selecting and transforming them using the options mentioned in reference. (This is optional, they should just be off to the side so they don't get in the way.)
To create the stripes, use the rectangle tool. Click and drag from one grid corner, to a lower grid corner.
While the rectangle is selected, use the dropper tool to pick a color from a imported image. You can also use the fill and stroke (shown on right) tab to create your own colors / edit colors / etc.
You can make these stripes however you want, they just need to all be equally sized. (They don't have to all have the same height, if you intentionally want that (like the demisexual flag for example).)
Then select all the stripes and transform them so that they fit the page.
All that's left is to save/export it.
To export it, use the export tab, under single file, page, adjust the width and height (in px) to however high res you want your image to be. (I usually do 3000 by 2000.)
Type in the desired file name in the box next to the folder symbol, use the folder symbol to choose its export location (which can also be used to determine the file name and save/export it), the adjacent drop-down-menu to select what to save it as (,png, .jpg, .svg, etc.), and the gear symbol to adjust other settings (I leave it as default, with antialias turned off (set to 0)).
And done, you've made a flag :D 🏳️🌈
Extra Notes
Vertically striped flags: it's very similar to above. You would just make the rectangles taller rather than wider.
Wavy stripes: first use the pen tool to create zigzags (click along the grid corners, and join the line at the end). The steepness/frequency of the zigzags is up to personal preference, they just need to extend off the page a bit. To create equally sized wavy stripes, have the all side lengths (highlighted in red) be equal except (depending on how you draw your zigzags) the first or last wave, which should have half the side length of the others.
Select everything, and with the node tool, select all the zigzag nodes (the corners don't need to be selected), and click make selected nodes smooth (half circle with point in middle symbol, at top of screen). (It'll likely look like it has weird lines in-between the waves, see glitch section at the end for how to fix that.)
Then resize it all to the height of the canvas.
This can of course be vertical too.
Gradients: You can use the fill and stroke dialogue, gradient tool, or mesh tool to do this.
To create the gradient, select the object, click the linear gradient symbol (gradient box) under fill and stroke. Or dragging / double clicking with the gradient/mesh tools.
To change the colors, click on the arrows or circles under fill and stroke, or clicking the points on the shape, to select the nodes. Then use fill and stroke to change the colors.
To create new colors/stops, click on the plus+ symbol under stops (under fill and stroke), or double click on the gradient. Edit the new colors in fill and stroke again.
To change the location of stops, use stop offset under fill and stroke, or drag the nodes on the gradient. You can also move the end points on the object to make it slanted or vertical.
Symbols: I make my own when I can (like the demi- triangle can be drawn with the pen tool, and resized to the correct proportions). When the symbol is too complicated, I import a .svg of it. Wikimedia commons is a great resource, and the popular twemoji comes in .svg format too. You could also edit it on over the .png in a rastor program if need be.
Deleting imported reference images: you can do this before saving it as a .svg, if you don't want to keep them / want to clean up the .svg file.
Antialiasing: an option that blurs things basically. A image with antialiasing off will be sharp pixels, while a image with antialiasing on will have transition colors between the main colors.
Below is an example. The left side is without antialiasing, and the right side is with antialiasing.
I can see why it might be preferable to have it on (like for diagonal shapes), but antialiasing can make recoloring .png (not .svg) files hard. The extra different colors messes with fill tools. I also think it looks cleaner without, so I prefer it off.
Exporting glitch: sometimes an exported image will have a thin line between the stripes, despite the fact the stripes are perfectly next to each other. (This seems to not just be problem with Inkscape, but with vectors in general.)
Below is a zoomed in example of what it'd look like. The left side shows the stripes are all next to each other, but the right image has a transparent line in-between the stripes.
This can be fixed a number of ways.
You could select all the objects, and duplicate them twice.
Or overlap them. The stripes will still be the same size when overlapped, but they will technically be behind each other, so there will be no gap.
With all the different stuff mentioned, you can basically think of them as building blocks with the grid as reference. They can all be mixed and matched together.
There's also some great Inkscape guides on YouTube, it's where I learned how to do a lot of this from (even if they're not for flags specifically, the concepts in those videos can be applied to flags).
Here's an overly elaborate flag I made, just to demonstrate some of the things that can be done.
Anyways what a long post haha. But maybe this will be helpful for anyone interested in making (pride) flags.
