Quite interesting how most of the world's flags use the same main colors. I wonder when the world's first 2.0 flags will come out, with drop shadows and gradients =)

++recommend

I found this graphic representation of flag colours very exciting, I wish I knew why. It has given me goose bumps. I tested my knowledge of the Canadian flag and was correct.

@ joel: that actually would be amazing, how about adding alpha channels as well haha.

Interesting observation in global vexillogical matter. I'm theorizing that many of the flag colors resulted from the availabilty of natural dyes. And as for the more recent nations... legacy designs and colors passed down from their previous colonial rulers. Just my guess. It's too bad you don't see a lot of pastel colored flags.

Maybe you've already seen this other way of turning flags into pie charts: http://www.brazilianartists.net/home/flags/index.htm
Of course it's not precise, and should be taken just as a advertising piece, but it's intresting anyway.

It is a famous theorem that all maps are four colorable. Is it possible to color countries with colors taken from the colors of a national flag so that adjacent countries get different colors, e.g., U.S.A. and Canada would be colored by the pairs (blue,white), (red,white), (blue,red) etc. If the solution (that is political coloring of the maps based on the flag colors) of this problem is possible then what is the minimum number of the colors. That is known (political) chromatic number of the graph corresponding to the map.

I. Cahit

Note. I have proposed a short proof for the four color theorem but not this one yet.