Minecraft officially introduced banners in 1.8 . After seeing the generic designs that were added in, banners didn't seem any fun anymore. But now, with the advent of Custom Banner Loader, everything changes! Create a simple black/white image, a .json file and bam! New banner and shield types. This mod automatically loads localization and adds in the crafting recipe.

Anyone who makes a design and would like to show it off, send it to me and I'll consider posting it as an example.

Thanks to Vazkii for inspiring this mod. If it wasn't for the introduction of Custom Banners in the mod Quark, I'd never have made this.

Basics of creating a banner:

Important Folders:

Important Folders

JSONs and Banner images go into the .../entity/banner folder. Shield images go into the .../entity/shield folder.

Clients and Servers need the JSONs. Images are only required on the Client side, however it will not crash a server if they are included in the config folder.

Json Format:

{
  "item": "minecraft:Item_Needed_To_Create_Design",
  "name": "Name_of_PNG_file",
  "id": "ID",
  "localized": "Engilsh_Name_of_Design"
}

The item field is the name of the item, identical to using the /give command
The IDs should all be unique, and are registered with "bl_" before them. IDs should be only 1-4 letters.
Localized is the English name given to the design. If the banner was of a ball, localized should be "Ball". Localized is used in the tooltip to describe the design
Name is the PNG file without the suffix .png . If this is not properly set, the textures will fail to load.