We present the design and fabrication of photonic crystal structures exhibiting electromagnetic bands that are flattened in all crystal directions, i.e., whose frequency variation with a wave vector is minimized. Such bands can be used to reduce group velocity of light propagating in an arbitrary crystal direction, which is of importance for the construction of miniaturized tunable optical delay components and low-threshold photonic crystal lasers, and the study of nonlinear optics phenomena. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.