Vexillology & Flag Nerd Hats

Vexillology, the study of flags, has a bigger public than its name suggests. The r/vexillology subreddit has reported more than 500,000 weekly visitors, and the hobby has a codified grammar: the North American Vexillological Association's Good Flag, Bad Flag, written by Ted Kaye in 2006, boils flag design down to five principles, including two to three colors and no lettering or seals. Its favourite insult is the S.O.B. flag, a seal on a bedsheet, and about half of US states fly one. The redesigns make news. Mississippi adopted a magnolia flag in 2021, Utah's 2022 redesign drew more than 7,000 proposals, and Minnesota's new flag first flew on May 11, 2024. The hobby does not always win: in a March 2025 advisory vote, Illinois kept its current flag with 43% of about 385,000 votes. These flag nerd hats grade other people's flags with the gravity of a peer reviewer. FLAG NERD and VEXILLOLOGY are the plain badges; the rest are the stances, from the seals manifesto to a tally of 900 flags rated and 11 good ones. NO MORE SEALS ON BEDSHEETS and the flag-rating line each get a second colorway. Map Nerd & Geography Hats carry one VEXILLOLOGIST badge among their Mercator and GeoGuessr jokes; this page is the flag-design world of seals, bedsheets and redesigns. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Choose one for your own flag opinions, or give one to the person who already has a redesign in mind.