Blog

Raise the flag

This image has had a bit of a resurgence on social media lately, thanks to a recent TED talk about flag design. All of a sudden I was getting pinged by Twitter notifications by folks holding up my flag as an example of “good” design (thanks, guys!)—and it made me realize that not only had I never gotten around to blogging about this project, but I also should probably do a little primer on the basics of flag design.

In a nutshell, I developed this flag design for a 2012 exhibition about vexillology (the study of flags) that I was invited to be a part of. It was held at Tacoma’s Fulcrum Gallery, and was titled Union Tac. Basically, the exhibit invited a group of local artists to propose a new city flag, and display their designs at the gallery. After I designed my flag, I hand-sewed this prototype (Betsy Ross-style!) for the exhibition.

The thing about flag design is that it’s much more difficult than it seems to be at first glance—and at least in the case of city flags, most people are doing it wrong. When it comes to city flags, mostly what you see are complex designs that contain a city’s official seal, or some sort of text paired with an image, or some weird combination of color fields and complex graphics that are unreadable at a small scale or large distance. These are all examples of real city flags (clockwise from top left: Milwaukee, New York City, Boston, Detroit), designs that might work under other circumstances (the city seals, for instance), but as flags that are just a mess.

The state flag for my own state of Washington commits the same cardinal sin as the Boston flag and so many others: whoever designed it just plonked the Great Seal onto a colored field and called it good. But look at all that detail in Washington’s portrait—there’s no way that thing is going to be readable at a distance. And one of the biggest mistakes here is the use of type (and as a lettering artist who loves type more than anything, this is hard for me to say!). One of the biggest rules of vexillology: no text. None. The flag should be readable and recognizable by anybody, regardless of literacy level or native language. Even a two-year old can recognize their country’s flag (or for that matter, a famous logo or an illustrated icon); they shouldn’t have to be able to read text to do so.

Take a look at these flags instead (clockwise from top left: Chicago, St. Louis, Portland, OR and Indianapolis)—this is how it’s done. Each of these flags is incredibly simple, readable and recognizable at any size or distance, and beautifully eye-catching. Each flag uses just a few colors (at most 3 colors, plus white), and each tells some sort of story that links to the city in question. The blue stripes in the Chicago flag, for instance, represent the bodies of water that define the city (Lake Michigan and the Chicago River). The fleur de lis in the St. Louis flag is a nod to the city’s French heritage. Indianapolis’s flag is basically a map of the city (how cool is that?), while Portland’s highlights the city’s location at the confluence of two rivers. These flags are all vastly different from one another, but they all use the same simple language.

So this is what was running through my head when I set about imagining Tacoma’s flag. I wanted to tell the story of our city and its place in the Northwest—but do so as minimally as possible. As you can see, there was a lot of rearranging and redrafting and re-simplifying—again and again. I’m normally the type of artist who refines a piece by adding to it—so you can imagine how difficult it was for me to keep stripping away at this one.

Here’s my finished flag design. The white triangle represents Mt. Rainier, against a blue field of sky above and a matching blue stripe below that stands for the waters of Puget Sound and Commencement Bay. The dark green stripe represents two things: the natural landforms of islands and trees that are such iconic parts of our landscape; and the continuum of industry upon which our city was founded. The gold circle represents both Tacoma’s location at the base of Mt. Rainier, and its origins as the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad (the circle resembles the symbol for a railroad stop). Finally, the colors were chosen not only for their correspondence to their real-world counterparts (trees, snow, sky, etc.), but also because they echo the colors used on the Washington state flag.

So that’s it. I still have my hand-sewn prototype carefully folded and tucked away, but I had kind of forgotten about the project after the exhibition ended. Many thanks to everyone on Twitter who helped revive the design and give it new life online. Who knows—maybe we’ll actually get to see it on a city flagpole some day.