Designing the Ownership Flag

by Tanos

The Ownership Flag is derived from the Ownership Icons, and is intended to represent everyone who is seeking or pursuing a relationship based on ownership: that is, 24/7 D/s or M/s, where ultimate authority over the submissive or slave is always in the hands of the owner.

As with the icons, the shield represents the owner, as head of the household, and taps into the whole set of historical associations between authority and aristocratic hierarchies. This convention also allows heads of household to base personal designs on a shield (and the TS monogram and shield I use at the bottom of webpages is an example.)

The thick circle placed on the shield represents the collar, and owned submissives and slaves. A collar is so universally part of D/s and M/s imagery that it's the obvious choice.

In designing the flag, the first question was how to place the collar-shield icon on the flag. It's very convenient for flags to be symmetric, since they're double sided: this way, there's no need for a mirror image to be made for the "back" of the flag, and there isn't a wrong way to hang the flag relative to the flag pole. So the middle of the flag was chosen.

Then the background design had to be chosen, and I've based this on the nine black and blue stripes of the Leather Pride Flag. Since the shield is curved, making it red provides another reference, via the red heart of the Leather flag. However, for the stripes, I chose black and white.

This has two useful associations: black and white represents the clear distinction between owners and property - rather than shades of gray; and black and white stripes were used to represent the bars of a cage or jail cell on the uniforms of convicts sentenced to penal servitude ("punishment slavery".) So you can view the combination as the owner's authority backed up by physical control.

The design can also be reproduced in two colours without losing its distinctiveness and without different components "bleeding" into each other. This means the flag can still be adapted for printing if only a single colour plus background is available.

This combination of colours also obeys the heraldic Rule of Tincture: that is, only the lighter "metals" (white or yellow) are placed next to the darker "colours" (black, blue, red or green). This rule was developed to make the designs on knights' shields stand out in battle, and is still followed by almost all genuine flags.

The flag design and image files are copyright, but may be reproduced freely for commercial or non-commercial purposes without prior permission.

Background

Leather Pride Flag

Rule of Tincture

National Flags, demonstrating how common the rule of tincture still is