South African Banners

[Stormraaf]

There hasn't been a Boer- or Afrikaner-themed banner since the days of The Althing, so I made some.

Can these be added? (If the Afrikaans versions seem like overkill, just the standard English ones.)

The first one shows part of a Boer mural from the Voortrekker Monument; the second one shows Cape Town and Table Mountain.

[Thusnelda]

They look fine, especially the last two. Good work, respect!

[Sigurd]

Good work thus far. I will ask my stepfather in time to come if he can think of ideas. He grew up within the German community in Cape Town, but might sitll be able to offer an idea if needed.

[[[So yea, he is an Austrian-born to an English mother and grew up amongst the German community in an Afrikaner city. Germanic multi-culturalism FTW.... ]]]

Having said that, even though there is no immediate "blood" connection, I can connect with the latter two more that the former two. ... And I especially like the Black Sun setting there.

[ladybright]

I like them. Could you add something that says the monument name/Table mountain SA. I think that would be an improvement.

[Stormraaf]

Could you add something that says the monument name/Table mountain SA. I think that would be an improvement.

I don't agree - it would throw off the banners' simplicity, IMO. The people likely to use it would be South Africans anyway, and they'd not need labels to know what it is.

Edit: I'll put in labels if I'm the only one who thinks this way.

[Hauke Haien]

Adding the location of the banner image is nice and helpful but reduces the aesthetic appeal of the banner with the addition of unnecessary text, making it look crowded. Ninety-nine percent of the time, experienced designers refrain from putting excess text on their banner because they understand the purpose of a banner is to look good and match the layout, not to be a source of information, and that it is not worth sacrificing the beauty of a banner and the overall quality of a webpage for a minority of individuals who are interested enough about the source of the banner image to ask. If people really want to know, they can browse through this thread and ask the maker. I suggest simply altering the file name of the banners instead of adding the location to the banner image.

Also, there are many banners to choose from, and many layouts, yet there are hardly any layouts with banners to match and vise versa. Perhaps, a vote could be taken to choose the most liked or used and layouts could be designed after those chosen banners, or more banners could be made to match the layouts provided. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to have few quality matching banners and layouts as opposed to a quantity of banners and layouts that don't complement eachother?

[Stormraaf]

Point of order - I'm not able to upload these myself.

[Aeternitas]

I like both, but I'm unsure about the second one (with the black sun). The black sun is an illegal symbol in Germany, like the swastika, and we agreed to keep Skadi officially unassociated with a specific political ideology in order to avoid legal implications. Here is what Thorburn wrote about adding a Third Reich flag for example:

We won't add this one. Skadi is a Free Speech forum, thus its software will not provide any flags on the public domain of Skadi Forum that represent ideologies of any kind. This would have undesired legal as well as political implications. And it would undermine our neutrality.

Your counter-argument would be that the Swastika flag is not only an ideological flag, but that it was also an official state flag in the past (similar to the flag of the "Confederate States" or the "Austrian Empire"); while this is correct and while other state flags also do have an ideological or political message (slippery slope), it is not as prominent, nor as narrowly defined, nor seen or recognized to the same degree by the public. In addition, none of these flags arouse a similar negative connotation in many viewers, nor are they banned in many Germanic countries and cause similar undesired legal implications.

That's at least five points that differ. While Skadi sustains a non-discrimination policy against any ideology, including National-Socialism, as long as its content is expressed in a rule-compliant form, offering this flag as a selectable profile flag would create the impression in many viewers that Skadi endorses this ideology; primarily because the Swastika flag is seen as a political and not a country's flag.

So unless a state or de facto regime is established in future that implements this flag again as an official national flag or the above-mentioned perceptions and legal conditions fundamentally change, it won't be selectable as a profile flag.

http://forums.skadi.net/showpost.php...5&postcount=26

I've uploaded the first one in the meantime.

[Sigurd]

About the Black Sun:

The design has loose visual parallels in Migration Age Alemannic brooches (Zierscheiben), possibly a variation of the Roman swastika fibula, thought to have been worn on Frankish and Alemannic women's belts. Some Alemannic or Bavarian specimens incorporate a swastika symbol at the center. The number of rays in the brooches varies between five and twelve.

Goodrick-Clarke (2002) does connect the Wewelsburg design with the Early Medieval Germanic brooches, and does assume that the original artefacts had a solar significance, stating that "this twelve-spoke sun wheel derives from decorative disks of the Merovingians of the early medieval period and are supposed to represent the visible sun or its passage through the months of the year." He further refers to scholarly discussion of the brooches in Nazi Germany, allowing for the possibility that the designers of the Wewelsburg mosaic were indeed inspired by these historical precedents.

Source

[Aeternitas]

About the Swastika:

Holy Odinic Symbols: The Fylfot/Swastika