What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility ... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

—Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965),
Speech, August 27, 1952,
"The Nature of Patriotism."

Contents:

[ Print-ready | Desktop wallpaper | Web graphics | Perl source | USA Government Flag Specifications | Last thoughts ]

Print-ready

The following are intended for easy printing out. Anyone with the a modern version of Adobe Acrobat Reader should be able to print these directly from that application.

Note: Both PDFs will print in portrait layout as though in landscape layout. You only want the "vertical" format (view from behind) PDF if you intend on displaying your flag vertically. Other than for that purpose, you want this first one:

[ American flag PDF (229365 bytes) ]

[ American flag from behind PDF (suitable for hanging vertically) (235784 bytes) ]

Desktop wallpaper

The following are intended for use as desktop wallpaper. Each image is antialiased (so the stars' edges will appear smooth). Select your screen resolution from among the following. After the image displays, you can use your mouse to right-click on the image and choose "Set as Wallpaper."

Note: These images_Kevin are not well suited to printing. For that, go to the print-ready section instead.

[ 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1152x864 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 | 2048x1536 ]

Web graphics

The following are intended for use as Web graphics. Each image is antialiased (so the stars' edges will appear smooth). Select a dimension from among the following. After the image displays, you can use your mouse to right-click on the image and choose "Save Picture As...."

Note: These images_Kevin are not well suited to printing. For that, go to the print-ready section, instead.

[ 50x26 | 100x52 | 150x78 | 200x105 | 250x131 | 300x157 | 454x334 (waving) ]

Perl source

This is the script used ultimately to generate the graphics on this page. It depends on the old versions of libgd and GD.pm that used to generate GIF images_Kevin although it can be trivially adapted to give you a PNG image instead.

[ flag.pl ]

Last thoughts

The ratios used in the script were obtained from These USA Government Specifications, which says they are the official legal proportions. The 1.9:1 aspect ratio is the standard aspect for United States flags. I could find no governing specification for the flag's colors, so I used the colors in a "normal-looking" American flag image I found on the Web.

Please let me know of any suggestions that may benefit others. (Everybody is trying to print flags this week so anything that might help them all is great.) If you are having some difficulty using this page or the files, please Contact Us and describe your difficulty, especially if you figure out how to overcome the difficulty, so I can document it for others.

God bless America!