Flag thoughts? (pictures)

[draggar]

I've "volunteered" to make the UKC national breed club for the Czechoslovakian vlcaks (United Czechoslovakian Vlcak Club a.k.a. UCsVC). I've thought about using for one of our graphics is a flag for the nation of origin flag but we have one small problem - Czechoslovakia no longer exists.

To make it more complicated, the two nations (Czech Republic and Slovakia) have both retained "country of origin" status. the good news is that the Czech Republic kept the most recent Czechoslovakian flag as their own.

I also wanted to incorporate the USA flag since it is the USA's national breed club.

For those of you who don't know the 3 flags, here are the three. Czech Republic to the left, Slovakia to the right, and USA to the left:



When making the flag I thought the Czech Republic should be the most significant since it is also the Czechoslovakian flag, Slovakia second since they are also a founding nation and third the USA.

I also *DO NOT* want the USA portion to go in between the two - I have a feeling that could send the wrong message to some people in those nations (that we were trying to get in between the two nations).

So, I came up with this:



It used the Czech flag as the basis but I turned the blue section of the flag to the stars in the USA flag and the crest on the Slovakian flag on the other half.

What do you think?

I've thought about using the first graphic but much thinner (so it would be the 3 flags together but very thin versions). I've also thought about taking a rectangle the size of a flag and splitting it into 3 (with a "Y") and in the top, Slovakia, to the left, Czech, and to the right, USA (obviously the 3 would be modified to fit and still be recognizable).

Thoughts?

I do have to say, I am very glad that the 3 nations use the same colors, red, white, and blue.

Edit: I've made some changes:

[teh_blumchenkinder]

1) what are the "official" dimensions of each flag?
2) nitpick: I think 13 stars is more traditional when not showing all 50 for the U.S./nitpick
3) I think the white border on the shield should be kept
4)get someone that is officially involved with the breed to check/vet the proposed 'flag', make sure you tell them what you're trying to do!
Good nose, though. It's basically fine, but so much about flags is nitpicky!
EDIT: please show the other design you were thinking about?

[draggar]

1) If you're talking about the country's flags I don't know but this one is 400 X 600 pixels.

2) Possibly - I looked for a graphic of a US flag where the field of blue would be about 400 pixels tall so I could cut out the red / white section of the Czech flag and past it over to that - that's why you see 15 stars (but if you notice - the first column is 5 stars, the second is 4 - which is the actual setup on the US flag).

3) That's possible but would require a lot of work. I used the "smart selection" tool so it was able to get the shield but if I selected the white then the whole top 1/3 of the Slovakian flag would have been selected.

4) I have asked. I even posted on another forum and I ended up talking to some who is from Slovakia but now lives in Prague (Czech Republic).

Other designs? That may take some work and I was actually thinking of sticking with this one since members of the club seem to like it. I was debating on posting it on a vlcak forum (most likely will) to see what they think but I wanted to get it a little fine tuned before I did.

[draggar]

I've also made some logos if anyone wants to give some feedback, I'm debating between these two or maybe other ideas. The backgrounds are transparent.




Edit: I don't know why Luna's head looks a little crushed in these. In Photoshop it looks fine, this happens when I save it as a GIF.

Edit2: Locally they look OK but look crushed when I upload them to Photobucket or Facebook.

Edit 3:

New one: