The innovative CinciFlags project has concluded with an official flag for each of the 52 neighborhoods of Cincinnati, Ohio. It is an impressive accomplishment, with generally high-quality and meaningful designs with consistent style.
Congratulations to Dale Williams, winner of the Coral Springs flag design contest! This flag replaces a previous flag featuring the city seal: The city received 80 submissions to the contest and narrowed the field to these six finalists: Like many such contests, Coral Springs' referenced Roman Mars' TED Talk and the Good Flag, Bad Flag guidelines.… Continue reading A New Flag for Coral Springs, Florida
As Ted Kaye noted last November, South Carolina's capital Columbia is looking to replace its SOB flag with something that better reflects the contemporary city and that will be embraced instead of ignored by the public. After receiving 547 proposed designs, the Columbia Design League had a panel of NAVA members select 18 finalists to… Continue reading Columbia, SC Soliciting Feedback On 18 Finalists
As we reported in 2015, design journalist Roman Mars spearheaded a prominent effort to revise San Francisco's flag, starting with a discussion of its problems in his immensely popular TED Talk, Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you've never noticed. He enlisted the sponsorship of design company Autodesk, attracted some media attention, including… Continue reading San Francisco Curbs Its Enthusiasm
The Rochester Flag Project, a community organization in Minnesota seeking to change the Rochester city flag, is soliciting designs at rochesterflag.com/contest. Interestingly, they are hosting two rounds of design submissions this year -- the first round ends August 18, and the second will run from October 16 to November 17. And each round will result in… Continue reading Rochester (Minnesota) Flag Project
We're up to a total of 80 efforts to create or redesign US and Canadian flags of cities, towns, or other municipalities, as tracked on our Municipal Flag Improvement page. Many of these have been inspired by the TED Talk Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you've never noticed by Roman Mars of the… Continue reading Municipal Flag Improvement Update
Seattle, like its encompassing county and state, is represented by a flag with its namesake's face -- in this case, that of the Suquamish Chief Si'ahl (anglicized as Seattle). Si'ahl lived from c. 1786 to 1866. One photograph of him survives (detail above), taken by L.B. Franklin in 1864. The flag was ostensibly designed by… Continue reading Face Flags of Washington, Part 3: Seattle
After a little over a year in limbo, Brad Lockhart's winning entry in the Downtown Bellingham Partnership's flag contest has been officially adopted by the city council of Bellingham, Washington. For more information about municipal flag improvement efforts in the US and Canada, see our Municipal Flag Improvement page.
New Hampshire Public Radio reports that city-council supported efforts to find a new flag for the city -- the existing monstrosity is pictured above -- have run into a roadblock in the form of councilmember Brenda Baer and her bad-design-blind colleagues: “Why are we changing it, what is so wrong with our present flag?” asked… Continue reading Laconian Vexillonaires Struggle Against Inertia
by Ted Kaye Columbia, the capital city of South Carolina, could really use a change of topic when it comes to flags. As the focal point for display of the Confederate Battle Flag in the South, the city hosted a turning point in the fractious debate, with the removal of the flag from the Confederate… Continue reading Flag Change in Columbia, South Carolina
Portland Flag Association 