SDL2025-G01C02-I20 Albanian Eagle

Albanian Eagle in a geometric representation

Item Identity: SDL2025-G01C02-I20

Title: Albanian Eagle

Artist: Sam Diellor Luani

Collection: SDL InnerSpace Origins

Section: Raster Retro

Alt Text

• Digital artwork with a geometric design of the Albanian double-headed eagle

• Features original vector shapes, pixel-edited outlines, and symbolic lens flares

• A tribute to identity, resistance, and sacred visual form

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My Albanian Eagle: The Sacred Geometry of Resistance

The reason why my most emotional works in visual art are in red and black is the Albanian flag. This work is a tribute to this flag and the Albanian Eagle.

This image represents the most honorable and refined of my many stylized interpretations of the emblematic double headed eagle of the Albanian flag. Every element in the composition, from the eagle itself to the concentric lens flares, was constructed using original vectors drawn in Micrografx Designer. These shapes were then beveled and pixel-edited in Photoshop, not just for polish, but as a gesture of genuine reverence—an act of sealing the image’s artistic and symbolic value. This was back in 1998.

The circular lens flares are not decorative afterthoughts; they are part of a geometric composition and armature I developed for a series of complex portraits. The eagle’s outline, vector-based, was imported into Photoshop and hand-brushed pixel by pixel—a deliberate choice to infuse the digital with the personal, by effort, like a continuation of the sacrifice this flag has always demanded. This wasn’t just graphic design. It was a ritual, as drawing this shape always has been for me since my early childhood.

The Albanian Eagle

The double-headed eagle is the shape I’ve drawn more than any other in my life. My earliest memories of sketching it are intertwined with trauma and defiance. In the land where I grew up, this symbol was forbidden. My father was imprisoned for expressing pride in it. Both his father and my mother’s father died fighting for and with this symbol. Ethnic cleansing was justified by the genocidal regime of the old land, under the pretext of suppressing this particular symbol.

To me, this double headed eagle was more than a national emblem—it was a sacred form. It shaped my visual thinking, my sense of symmetry, my understanding of balance and proportion. It taught me how to draw. It taught me what it means to resist. Every time I drew it, it was a quiet act of rebellion, a ritual of remembrance, and a declaration of identity and pride.

The double-headed eagle has ancient roots. It appears in Byzantine heraldry, Roman iconography, and various imperial flags. It is also a Serbian national symbol. But the Albanian version—especially the contemporary rectangular form—is different, and unique. Unlike the triangular or German-style eagles found in many logos, and unlike the classical Albanian eagle of the Albanian National Rebirth, the contemporary Albanian eagle has the structure of a mandala in a true Jungian sense. It is symmetrical, intricate, and psychologically potent. I can attest to its power as a meditative and transformative shape. It has shaped more than my personality, it has shaped my fate.

My polygonal design

The geometric eagle in this image isn’t just a digital construct from a moment of instant inspiration, but a shape with a longer history. I would draw a simpler version of it by hand as a child—often on graph paper, in one continuous line, designed to be carved from a single piece of plywood, and this is also evident in this image. That tactile approach to form has stayed with me. It’s visible in my heraldic and logo works, where shapes are designed to be physically cut, assembled, and honored.

This eagle is the genesis of all my works in the category visual identity, with logos, original symbolic shapes, and heraldry inspired works. One idea with this geometric representation was to create a design that could be cut into one piece, and easily used as a multifunctional modular scalable element in logos, beveled compositions, 3d and perspective graphics. I made this geometric design in two cropped versions, one rectangular and one circular, because I had several physical 3d-realizations in my mind.

The reason the wings have a radiating shape was to integrate the symbol with the sun and create a “solar eagle” as a sculpture. I never realized this as a physical sculpture, but with the years, these radiating features, the “solar wings” of this vector drawing of my geometric eagle, evolved into a deeper part of my identity, visualized in my most sacred symbol, my Solar Lion. This double headed eagle is the conceptual heart of my Solar Lion.

Before creating this image in the 1990s, I scoured every clip art CD and early internet archive I could find. What I discovered was disheartening: poorly vectorized flags, asymmetrical designs, and kitschy reproductions. No geometric interpretations. No stylized tributes. Just visual neglect. Unfortunately, I see that the situation is pretty much the same. Even today, most “Albanian art” using this symbol is superficial—unoriginal kitschy decals with zero creative imagination.

This image was my answer to that void. To ensure its legacy, together with this image, I’m publishing the original vector, in one rectangular and one circular version, as SVGs in a special gallery with creative commons for this kind of graphics, named “SDL Visual Identity & Emblematic Works.” Since I’ve seen the rectangular version in a few online publications, it’s important to emphasize that I am the author of this geometric design of the double headed eagle used in this image.

I’ll be writing more about this in SDL InnerSpace, but for now, this image stands as a testament—not just to design, but to memory, resistance, and the sacred geometry of identity.