I’m back from a short trip to Chicago, where I had a blast shooting interviews at WordCamp for Publishers. While I was there, I noticed the city’s official flag could be seen everywhere. Shirts, bumper stickers, hats, coffee cups, tattoos, etc. Chicago’s flag, some blue bars with 4 red stars, is simple and iconic. San Francisco’s flag, on the other hand, is a hot mess of unnecessary text, yellow on white graphics, and too much going on.
Just for shiggles I decided to take a stab at redesigning our city’s flag using trixels (like pixel art, but with triangles).
If I were to critique my own flag, I’d say it too is unnecessarily busy. I’d love to try again. I’d also like to try some new ideas that having nothing to do with the old flag, but I think the phoenix imagery is a great idea for an SF flag.
For more info on flag design, check out this fantastic talk by Roman Mars about the simple rules that make for good flag design.
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