One Man’s Quest to Fix Austin’s Flag

Updated to remove the notch in the star

Texans love their flags. From the Six Flags of Texas to the battle flags of the Texas War for Independence. As a Texan and a graphic designer, I particularly have a fondness for flags. In fact, I have a flag crush on the city of Chicago’s and District of Columbia’s. I honestly thought I could hide my shame of my adopted hometown of Austin’s flag, but it’s awful. To make matters worse, it got called to the carpet by Roman Mars in his TED talk “Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you’ve never noticed” as an example of one of the worst city flags in the country. If we are on the way to being a true international city, it’s time that we graduate from provincial flag to international flag status.

The City of Austin’s flag, it’s the worst.

Why is the Austin flag so bad? Roman Mars referred to it as an “SOS” or a “Shield on a Sheet” and that is just the start. The North American Vexilogical Association has laid out guidelines for what makes a good flag, and Austin violates almost all of them.

NAVA Five Basic Principles of Flag Design

Mr. Mars gave a great example of how a city burdened with a seal on a sheet can update their flag. Amsterdam has a great flag based on their Coat of Arms. They simply took the crest, stripped it of its heraldry and put it on a flag — an idea, among many, I thought was worth exploring.

Following Amsterdam’s lead and rotating our shield, we see a shape that is in conflict with NAVA’s 5th principle (Be distinctive). With respect to Puerto Rico, more exploration is needed.

Turning focus away from the entire shield to just the red and white stripes, again we impede on Principle 5. Again, out of respect to the Austrian flag, Austin’s flag will have to be something else.

Continuing to explore shapes within the flag, the inverted triangle looks interesting. It might have been a good flag twenty years ago, today it is just the Gmail logo.

Zooming into the to the right-hand corner we find a great shape. An added bonus, it starts to look like a cousin the to Texas flag. This is the right form for Austin.

The crest was designed in 1916 by Ray F. Coyle. He combined a shield formed by three vertical stripes, with an inverted triangle at the top and a lamp of knowledge within the triangle, (that acknowledges our city’s rich educational history). Atop the shield is the silhouette of the State capitol and elements of Stephen F. Austin’s family coat of arms, specifically a Latin cross with crosslets and a pair of wings.

The rest of the city’s crest is still under-represented on the new flag. I think the remaining elements can be sprinkled in to add some true distinction and get rid of the hodgepodge that our flag suffers from.

To represent the state seat of power and the capitol building we will use our own lonestar, and to nod to the cross we will borrow from the St. Andrews cross that adorns the Scottish flag, Stephen F. Austins ancestral homeland.

The Capitol to represent us as the state’s seat of power and elements from Stephen F. Austin’s family crest are important, but can get really fussy — maybe we can represent him in a better way and simplify the flag in the process.

If it were up to a cartographer to symbolize a Capitol on a map they would almost always go with a star. (Good enough for cartography, good enough for Austin’s flag.) Out with the silhouette of the Capitol, in with its own Lone Star.

The cross from Mr. Austin’s family crest is a nice, but ultimately adds clutter and might exclude some citizens. I propose we borrow the official blue of Mr. Austin’s familial homeland flag of Scotland and borrow a little white from the St. Andrew’s cross that adorns the same flag. I think this nods to Mr. Austin and his family crest nicely and cleans up our flag.

Lastly, combining the star and Mr. Austin’s hints of his Scottish homeland all on a field of the Texas flag red, we have a new city flag.

How will it measure up? I think it scores pretty well according to the International Flag Design Guidelines. Let me know what you think. Is it time for this new Austin flag?

So what next

I have learned a lot from the journey this flag design has sent me on (watch me speak about it here). The two things I found that are most important to a flags adoption are:

1. The flag cannot be a city effort or a private effort it must be owned by the citizens of the community.
2. A flag cannot be a set of cute symbols with meanings attached to them. A flag has to fly for a cause, to be a rally cry for a community of like-minded individuals to point to as a sign of shared pride.

That said this flag design now belongs to the city. In short, this flag design exists under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.

Email me for source files at mkriegs77@gmail.com