The Colours of the USA

In 1969, a human being stepped onto the Moon and planted this flag. Whatever else you say about the USA, and everyone on Earth has an opinion, only one flag has ever stood on another world. Six of them, actually. They're still up there, bleached white by the sun, waiting.

Where it all began

It started as the longest of long shots: thirteen colonies declaring in 1776 that all men are created equal, then spending two and a half centuries arguing, at times bleeding, over what those words fully mean, and expanding who they include. The Constitution of 1787 became the world's oldest written national constitution still in force; the Statue of Liberty raised her torch in 1886 over a harbour that processed millions of new Americans through Ellis Island; and the country assembled itself from every nation on this shop's shelves. That's the American trick: it's not an ethnicity. It's a bet, that people from everywhere can build something together. The bet is still running.

The minds

Edison lit the world; the Wright brothers, two bicycle mechanics from Ohio, flew first at Kitty Hawk in 1903, within 66 years, 66!, the species went from that beach to the Moon, mostly on American engineering. Einstein finished his career at Princeton; Salk beat polio and refused to patent the vaccine, could you patent the sun?, he asked. Add jazz, born in New Orleans, blues from the Delta, rock and roll, hip-hop from a Bronx block party in 1973, and Hollywood, and you realise the USA's biggest export was never goods. It's stories and sound. Martin Luther King's dream speech is quoted on every continent; Mark Twain and Toni Morrison sit on every world bookshelf; the internet itself grew from American labs into everyone's pocket.

Made in the USA

Still the world's largest economy, and the portfolio is everything everywhere: Boeing jets and SpaceX rockets, now landing themselves, Iowa corn and Kansas wheat feeding continents, Silicon Valley's entire digital universe, the phone, the search, the social feed, all American-born, Detroit muscle and Tennessee whiskey, Levi's jeans, invented for gold miners in 1873, now the planet's default trousers, and a university system that draws more international students than any other country. The dollar in most of the world's wallets is, of course, the house currency.

Where to go

New York, the city other cities dream about at night: walk the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn, see Lady Liberty from the free Staten Island ferry, eat your way through Queens, the most linguistically diverse place on Earth. New Orleans for jazz in the streets and beignets at 2 a.m. Chicago for architecture and deep-dish arguments. San Francisco's fog, Nashville's honky-tonks, Miami's Latin heartbeat.

Then the land itself, which is the real headliner. The Grand Canyon, a mile deep and utterly indifferent to your photos, go at sunrise. Yellowstone, the world's first national park (1872, an American invention later copied by every nation), where geysers erupt on schedule and bison own the road. Yosemite's granite walls. Utah's red rock in Zion and Arches. Highway 1 down the California coast, Route 66 for the myth, the Blue Ridge Parkway in October, and Hawaii's volcanoes still building new land daily. America's best idea really was the national parks. There are 63. Start anywhere.

Culture, on a plate and in the ear

Eat regionally and argue loudly: Texas brisket versus Carolina pulled pork, New York slice versus Chicago deep dish, gumbo, lobster rolls, green chile in New Mexico, and a proper diner breakfast with bottomless coffee, one of civilisation's quiet peaks. Thanksgiving is the great American ritual: everyone home, one table, gratitude and pie. The music never stops, country in Nashville, blues in Memphis, jazz in NOLA, hip-hop everywhere, and on the Fourth of July the whole vast argument of a country pauses for fireworks. The national anthem ends with a question, land of the free, home of the brave?, and the country's whole story is the ongoing attempt to answer yes.

Every colour is someone's home. I print it the way memory keeps it: vintage-washed, distressed, made to order.

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P.S. Thirteen stripes for the original bet, fifty stars for how far it spread, and a design schoolkids pledge to and astronauts pack for space. Find your flag.