Talk:Flag of the United States: Difference between revisions

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“The current internal style guide of the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs specifies PMS 282C blue and PMS 193C red, and gives RGB and CMYK conversions generated by Adobe InDesign.”

I haven’t found a single conversion program that turns PMS 193C into #B31942 or PMS 282C into #0A3161. It’s not uncommon for designers to specifically choose different shades for differing mediums. Is there any evidence that the RGB/CMYK values in the DoS guide were specifically converted from Pantone? (I bring this up in part because there have been arguments before where the credibility of the DoS docs was attacked with arguments that “random staffers” were being unspecific, and this phrasing, which has no source and may well be false, also seems to fit that messaging.) If it’s accurate, can we cite a source, and if it’s not, can we alter/strike it? TheTaraStark (talk) 20:57, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Should we not use the Pantone color as most countries do here on Wikipedia File:Flag of the United States (DoS ECA Color Standard) (Pantone).svg …..or the one recommended by the department itself for digital consumption File:Flag of the United States (DoS ECA Color Standard).svg Moxy🍁 21:04, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We should be using the non-commercial version. Pantone is a copywritten color system and is not appropriate CreativeNightPainter (talk) 06:49, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I haven’t checked whether this is still relevant (Either in terms of the article or the current RGB colours), but the claim about conversion in InDesign 6 comes from this version of the style guide JPD (talk) 05:59, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Please set to “none” as short description per WP:SDEXAMPLES. 124.217.88.138 (talk) 03:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Valorrr (talk) 03:02, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is the source for the Web Colors version of the flag that we are currently using? If not properly sourced to a government doc we should replace it. ✨ΩmegaMantis✨^blather 17:42, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These are the Liberian flag‘s colors. 204.210.149.11 (talk) 13:45, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Though Liberia does have historic ties to the United States and their flag reflects it, I don’t think that we should use their flag colors as there is already a (contradicting with other sources, but still up-to-date) government doc that we have used previously for the colors of this flag (and that we still use on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, as well as the United States English Wikipedia article!) I have changed the flag on this page to Flag of the United States.svg, which is based off this government doc (by the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in 2017). ✨ΩmegaMantis✨^blather 19:36, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I redid the entire Colors section as it had several errors. Firstly, the DDD-F-416F colors are incorrect. The specification of the colors is not DDD-F-416F, but the one superseding it, DDD-F-416E. In regards to the colors themselves, color No. 70001 is white in the Standard Color Reference of America. By default, it is equivalent to white in all other color matching systems. A better conversion of the DDD-F-416E colors is #BF0A30 for red and #00205B for blue. Furthermore, because the DDD-F-416E colors are required for all flags produced for the U.S. federal government, we are able to see what flags the federal government uses. From several examples that I can find online, the flags they use have colors that do not match the former DDD-F-416F colors. Rather, they match the other colors listed.

Some of the files listed in this section, specifically File:Flag of the United States (DoS ECA Color Standard) (Pantone).svg and File:Flag of the United States (Pantone).svg, either do not have a source or the source provided does not support the colors being used in the file. For that reason, I have removed those flags. HoosierMan1816 (talk) 13:42, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You need to source that. Burn the flag (talk) 04:07, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You seem fairly confused. DDD-F-416F superseded DDD-F-416E, not the other way round. In any case, the colour specifications given in both documents are essentially the same – the differences being that E gives the numbers as well as the names of the Cable and refers to the 9th edition of the color card, while F gives the names only and refers to the 10th edition.

The RGB colours used in File:Flag_of_the_United_States_(DDD-F-416F_specifications_-_relative).svg are based on colorimetric analysis of the 9th edition of the SCCA, so if there is any real difference between the colours in E and F, this illustration is based on E (the older one). But I suspect there hasn’t been much change from the 9th edition to the 10th edition, and mismatch you’re seeing between that image and pictures of current flags has more to do around the assumptions used in the original analysis and the conversion to RGB.

You have put in the article the statement “When matched in the the Pantone Matching System (PMS), these colors are “White”, “Old Glory Red” PMS 193C, and “Old Glory Blue” PMS 281C.” You did not provide a source for this, and I don’t know of any reason to be confident that Pantone’s “Old Glory Red” and “Old Glory Blue” have been derived through matching with the Cable colours, rather than based on an older/alternative specification of the flag colours. As for white, equating SCCA/SCRA White with Pantone White is very understandable, but claiming that sort of equivalence is based on matching seems dubious. I hesitate to get into the question of which colours should be used in the main image, but we should definitely avoid overstating the status of these conversions. JPD (talk) 05:50, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

None of Pantone’s colors are at all close to any of the relevant Cable colors. –jacobolus (t) 06:09, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, giving the white RGB values in 1-as-maximum form, while the other colours in the same table use 255-as-maximum is just silly. JPD (talk) 06:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]