Colors of the World’s Flags

By Minnesotastan in Everything Else, Travel on Oct 25, 2009 at 12:04 pm

colors of world flagsMedia designer Shahee Ilyas has created pie charts showing the colors of the flags of over 200 nations.

Using a list of countries generated by The World Factbook database, flags of countries fetched from Wikipedia are analysed by a custom made python script to calculate the proportions of colours on each of them. That is then translated on to a piechart using another python script. The proportions of colours on all unique flags are used to finally generate a piechart of proportions of colours for all the flags combined.

Embedded on top is a screencap of a portion of the display, alphabetically arranged (Afghanistan, Albania…); the original at the artist’s website will display the name of the country when a mouse is passed over the pie chart.  The larger pie chart on the bottom is a composite of all the colors from all of the flags.

Via The Life and Times of Michael5000, who notes that the color violet/lavender/purple is notably absent from world flags (as is gray).


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  1. Johnny Cat
    Oct 25th, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    There are trace amounts of grey in the flags for Spain, Malta, Pitcairn Islands and Falkland Islands. I don’t see any pink, though.

  2. Minnesotastan
    Oct 25th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    The lion in Spain looks pink -

    http://flagpedia.net/spain

    - although the description says “purple on silver” -

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flag#The_Spanish_coat_of_arms

  3. Minnesotastan
    Oct 25th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    Ant, you’re right – much to my consternation. I hadn’t remembered that post (and didn’t find it when I searched before posting).

  4. ted
    Oct 25th, 2009 at 7:37 pm

    What an absolutely pointless endeavour.

  5. Namowal
    Oct 25th, 2009 at 9:17 pm

    I wonder how the popular flag colors compare to colors of candy bars or detergent packages. In a sense, all are designed with some degree of “Hey! Look at me!” in mind.

  6. Alex
    Oct 25th, 2009 at 10:19 pm

    Duplicates happen. Don’t worry about ‘em. :)

  7. Katey
    Oct 25th, 2009 at 11:20 pm

    Ted, yeah, pointless, like all that art, music and video games out there. Horrid, really, that people waste their vaulable time on such petty things rather than trying to solve real issues like World Hunger.

  8. felixthecat
    Oct 26th, 2009 at 5:17 am

    As a test, I searched for “flags colors”. It was easy enough to find, like third on the list.

    Still neat though.

  9. ted
    Oct 26th, 2009 at 6:38 am

    Really, Katey? Art and music?

  10. lapidus
    Oct 26th, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    pointlessness is subjective.

  11. Berick Cook
    Oct 26th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    Yes, really Ted. Art itself is subjective. Personally, I thought it was an interesting project.

    Also, duplicates are not always bad. Especially since the original is over 2 years old. I would not have seen this had it not been posted again. Thanks!


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