The horizontal stripes (from top to bottom) of yellow, blue and red tricolor have a ratio of 2:1:1.

By contrast, the flag of Venezuela is a more conventional tricolor due to its evenly sized stripes.

Fascinated by Miranda's account of his exploits in the United States Revolutionary War and his travels throughout the Americas and Europe, Goethe told him, "Your destiny is to create in your land a place where primary colors are not distorted."

He proceeded to clarify what he meant: First he explained to me the way the iris transforms light into the three primary colours […] then he proved to me why yellow is the most warm, noble and closest to [white] light; why blue is that mix of excitement and serenity, a distance that evokes shadows; and why red is the exaltation of yellow and blue, the synthesis, the vanishing of light into shadow.It is not that the world is made of yellows, blues and reds; it is that in this manner, as if in an infinite combination of these three colours, we human beings see it.

[4][5] In the 1801 plan for an army to liberate Spanish America, which he submitted unsuccessfully to the British cabinet, Miranda requested the materials for "ten flags, whose colors shall be red, yellow, and blue, in three zones.