About the Empire's symbol on the flag I can accept that could be difficult representate actually the description of "starship and sun" made in the books. But was really necessary that it was so similar than the Rebel Alliance of Star Wars? ..... Or it was to capture those others fans?
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My guess is it's because the symbol, as it was represented on the cover of the book, reminds people of the NASA logo:
The symbol on the cover of the book isn't quite how Asimov described it. In "Foundation" he described it so: "The golden globe with its conventionalized rays, and the oblique cigar shape that was a space vessel." The illustrator already took an artistic licence changing the "cigar shape", which is, realistically, how everybody expects a rocket and most spaceship designs to look, into an arrow-point. It's very likely that the similarity to the NASA logo is entirely deliberate. After all, most SF fans are also NASA fans.
The problem is that the international audience may not all be fans of NASA, because what about ESA, Roscosmos, CNSA and ISRO? Some redesign was needed anyway, and clearly they decided to go for a complete re-think that has the symbol for planet Earth as the main feature.