Flags & Standards FAQ

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There are already many excellent and comprehensive ranges of flags available so why produce another one ?

When I started running a painting service for smaller scale figures it soon became obvious that customers had quite varied views on how they wanted their unit standards to look. Some wanted big and bright, others wanted them in scale and accurate and I could never find all that I needed to keep customers happy from a single printed range.

I tried flags downloaded from the Internet too, from excellent sites like Warflag, but the images were not always sharp and often the colours needed considerable adjustment to come out right on my printer. No fault of the designers, those problems are inherent in sharing graphics between systems.

I do a bit of graphical design work on the computer so I started to make my own flags and my customers seemed to like them. I had control over all aspects of the flag; size, colour and the type of paper - great.

To get the crisp detail I draw all designs as vector graphics and this means that they retain sharp and crisp detail, no matter what size they are reduced to. Naturally there are limits imposed by the printer used but modern colour lasers are able to produce a high quality image if the paper is right (and mine is - believe me, I tried a lot that didn't work as well). As an example - the regimental numbers in the corners of French Napoleonic flags can just about be read with a magnifying glass on the 6mm flags.

 

Will the flag colours run or smear when wet ? No - the flags are laser printed.
Laser printed ? I have heard that laser printed flags can crack. This is true. The heat used to seal laser toner to the surface of the paper can make the paper brittle and toner can separate from the paper if it is folded sharply. If you follow the instructions and avoid creasing the paper as you assemble the flags, you won't have that problem.
How thick is the paper used for your flags ? All 10-22mm ranges are currently printed on high quality 100gsm paper. This does make them very sturdy once assembled. 6-8mm ranges are printed on 90gsm paper that is thinner but of equal quality to make them a bit more flexible.
The latest 90gsm paper I have is suitable for all sizes so I will be using that for all ranges once stock of 100gsm runs out
How durable are your flags - will they stand up to regular use ? Obviously this depends on how well you treat your figures but, if you think they are likely to be handled by the flags on a regular basis then I'd advise varnishing the flag. Use a water-based acrylic varnish.
Will you be doing flags for (... insert period or battle here ...) ? I'm usually working on a few areas at the same time but can't always predict what will get finished first. A lot depends on availability of information and I've been stalled for ages on some ranges trying to find specific information. I'm always open to suggestions but won't promise I can do a range - e-mail me.
One of your flags is wrong - do you want to know about it ? I certainly do. I try hard not to make errors but I'm sure that they will creep in. Tell me about the error and I'll look into it and correct it as soon as possible.