Your friendly neighborhood flag-revering American has a suggestion for you: there are two design elements of note on an American flag. The first is the color scheme: red, white, and blue. The second is the motif: stars (generally plural, number mostly unimportant although it is canonically 50) and stripes (generally plural, number mostly unimportant although it is canonically 13).

If it doesn't have all three of red, white, and blue or both of stars and stripes, the designer almost certainly wasn't going for an American flag. For example, the overwhelming majority of Americans would not connect a white star and a blue star paired together as recognizably American.

American flag iconography also tends to use wavy lines, for the "flag fluttering in the breeze" effect. Additionally, it overwhelmingly features the flag oriented horizontally with the blue bits in the top left.

For a good example of modern American flag iconography, see the Obama O logo (which is, incidentally, probably the best logo I have ever seen in politics or otherwise, and I say that as a Republican). You don't remember McCain's campaign logo (that's a statement, not a question, nobody remembers it) but it had a Navy Star rather than a flag at its centerpiece.

Sorry, I get a kick out of this stuff. Tangent over.

The number of stars is not arbitrary, it is equal to the number of states. In fact the US flag has been changed whenever states joined the union. Before Hawaii's statehood in 1960, the flag had 49 stars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usa_flag#Historical_progression...

I think the parent knows that the number of starts on the American flag is not arbitrary. He is, however, talking about icons and pictures where someone deliberately invokes the American flag. In that case, a few stars is enough to get the idea across.

Well, that's the more sophisticated view of course. To me it looks like something on a poster for a movie about Navy jet fighter pilots.

The US Navy star design: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevestr/434646324/in/set-72157...