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Information Code Bandera (Flag Information Code,) is the official convention approved by the international federation of vexillological associations to standardize the description of the various characteristics common to all flags and facilitate their classification. The code is based on the "international flag identification symbols" created by Whitney Smith and was definitively adopted at the international level by the FIAV General Assembly at its 7th session, on August 27, 1981, during the 9th International Congress of Vexillology held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, recommending its use to all organizations and individuals that comprise it, vexillologists, publicists and all those dedicated to the study of flags.

The regulation was later amended on July 5, 1995 (in its 3rd section, section a) and on July 23, 2001 (where a new 1st section was added and the rest were renumbered according to the changes introduced), at the 14th and 17th sessions of the General Assembly, during the 16th and 19th International Congress of Vexillology, held in Warsaw, Poland, and York, England, respectively.

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Section 2a

The code was created in order to provide a general regulatory framework for the symbology of the flags, minimize conflicts between the various alternatives of pre-existing nomenclature and facilitate scientific research on the subject. It establishes four specific purposes:

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• Allow the recording and transmission of basic flag information in a concise, accurate manner that avoids misinterpretation as much as possible. In addition, it must be easy to learn and understandable even for speakers of different languages;

• Standardize knowledge about flags in order to facilitate comparative studies on their characteristics;

• Provide researchers, advertisers, and others with a convenient system for recording, exchanging, and publishing information; Y

• Eliminate - as far as possible - existing confusion in the terminology used by governments and others when describing national flags and their uses.

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Section 3a

The code establishes in its 3rd section a series of guidelines and abbreviations to represent the colors of the flags synthetically. These are the colors with their corresponding official abbreviations: