Week 10_4/2/16_Superior Flag Design

@FlagLovers you want to check out this link to Roman Mars' TED Talk on the basic dos and don'ts of flag design! A designer's must see!

When looking for flag designs for my hometown, Superior, Wisconsin, I did not come up with any results, which I found to be more exciting than if I had actually found one. I knew that it would be more fun to try to come up with a design that did not – intentionally or unintentionally – mimic anything already in existence. 

Before I actually started with the design, I decided that I needed to come up with a list of important or well-known aspects of Superior. The list included the town's namesake Lake Superior, the logging and paper industries, iron ore mining, our sister city, Duluth, Minnesota, the famous Aerial Lift Bridge, and shipping. The video had mentioned that there should be two to three colors, and I decided immediately that there should be blue and green, blue to represent Lake Superior, which is one of the largest contributors to our local economy, and green to represent the huge forests used for the paper mills and logging. I knew that a third color I would use would be black, to represent the iron ore industry, which is one of the largest industries in the Northland, a reason why the region is often called the Iron Range.

Next, I needed to decide on shapes. As much as I wanted to include a ship or a bridge on a sea of blue, I felt that the two designs would be complicated, especially considering the complex design of the Aerial Lift Bridge itself, iconic though it is in its representation of the Twin Ports (Superior and Duluth). I chose instead to have a blue triangle on the right side of the flag, which represents Lake Superior. It takes up about half of the flag because it is the largest freshwater lake in the world, and plays a large part in the lives of the people who live near it. I then decided that the rest of the flag should simply be green, to show the forests that are used for paper mills and logging. In order to truly represent where Superior sits in relation to the lake, I put a black star – again, black for iron ore mining – right at the apex of the blue triangle, where the city sits right at the tip of Lake Superior when looking at maps. In order to also include our relationship with Duluth, Minnesota, I put a smaller star above and to the right of the larger star. The relationship between Superior and Duluth, nicknamed the Twin Ports, largely has to do with mining and shipping, both of which use Lake Superior extensively for transport. Although it is technically a flag for Superior, I felt that Duluth was too closely intertwined in my city’s economy and culture to leave it out. If there were one thing that I wish I could have included, it would definitely have been something that would indicate the Native Americans who are prominent in the area, and the importance that they have had in our culture in not only Superior, but in the entire Iron Range.