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Vexillonnaire Award

NAVA's  Vexillonnaire Award, established by the NAVA executive board in 2003, recognizes a significant and successful act of activist vexillology, involving flag design or usage, in North America.  Vexillonnaires are flag scholars who become personally involved in a specific event of creating, changing, or improving flag design, or promoting good flag usage or altering it for the better.

Vexillonnaire Medal

The Vexillonnaire Award honors the "engaged vexillologist" who goes beyond the limits of descriptive study to become personally involved in:

  1. creating, changing, or improving flag design,
  2. promoting good flag usage or altering it for the better, or
  3. leading similar accomplishments in activist vexillology,
in a distinctly public manner, with documented success, informed by sound vexillological or vexillographic knowledge.

 

The award honors actions that change the way people interact with flags.

Vexillonnaires:
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Rev. William M. Becker and Lee Herold: for their successful 30+ year effort to change the flag of Minnesota:  These long-time NAVA members can claim primary credit for the public's enthusiasm for flag-change in their state. (2024)

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Sen. Daniel McCay: for his leading role in the development and adoption of Utah’s new state flag, shepherding the four-year effort to update the Utah flag through the challenging conceptual, design, and legislative processes. (2023)

Roman Mars: for bringing attention to current issues in municipal flag design through his 2015 TED Talk, which has been viewed over 6 million times and has spurred flag-change in hundreds of cities across the United States and beyond. (2020)

Skip Wheeler: for spurring the development and adoption of striking flags for the U.S. island territories of Midway, Johnston Atoll, Palmyra, and Navassa, working with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Nature Conservancy, and the U.S. Air Force. (2010)

Peter Ansoff: for skillfully guiding the flag-design efforts in the Virginia communities of Annandale, Springfield, and Leesburg, helping the local organizers run contests and judge proposals leading to the successful adoption of striking flags. (2008)

Sophie Rault: for her excellent and dedicated design work resulting in the flag of the Healing Lodge of the Seven Nations (a Regional Youth Treatment Center in Spokane, Washington), whose compelling design now frequently serves as a pan-Indian flag. (2007)

Tony Johnson: for his inspired design and work toward adoption of the Chinook tribal flag, symbolizing his southwest Washington tribe with a stylized Chinook salmon and reflecting the tenets of good flag design. (2004)

Ed Jackson: for his informed support for the Georgia General Assembly's difficult and complex efforts to redesign the state flag, resulting in an improved design which honored state history, reflected the tenets of good flag design, and was adopted as the new Georgia state flag. (2003)

Douglas Lynch: for revisiting his 1969 design for the flag of Portland, Oregon, in a successful effort to simplify and improve it following sound flag design principles, through an effort assisted by several NAVA members. (2002)

Ted Kaye: for the compilation and publication of Good Flag, Bad Flag, a NAVA guide to flag design, and for the conception, coordination, promotion, and documentation of the Great NAVA Flag Survey. (2001)

James Babcock: for spearheading a year-long drive across 16 cities in the Hampton Roads Region of Virginia to develop the first regional flag in the U.S. based on sound vexillographic principles; it saw widespread adoption throughout the area. (1998)

Peter Orenski:  for leading the public process of flag design and adoption for New Milford, Connecticut, and for publishing the results for others in A Flag for New Milford, the Practical Guide for Creating a Successful Civic Flag. (1995)