The Vexillonnaire Award

nava flag

NAVA's Vexillonnaire Award, established in 2003, recognizes a significant and successful act of activist vexillology, involving flag design or usage, in North America .  A single Award is presented annually, with its recipient announced at NAVA's Annual Meeting.

The Vexillonnaire Award honors the "engaged vexillologist" who goes beyond the limits of descriptive study to become personally involved in a specific event of 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, as opposed to flag scholarship or boosterism.  The difference between a vexillonnaire and a vexillologist is analogous to that between a politician and a political scientist, or a musician and a musicologist.
Vexillonnaires:

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.