Mount Adams

This week is Mt. Adams, maybe the most picturesque neighborhood in the city, deserving of a picturesque flag.  Mt. Adams is also old with a lot of history.  It was originally called Mt. Ida until 1843 when president John Quincy Adams visited it to dedicate the opening of the Cincinnati Observatory and the hill was renamed after him.  A map of Mt. Adams is below.


One of the first things that comes to mind for many people at the mention of Mt. Adams is the steep steps that cover the neighborhood and for the famous Good Friday step pilgrimage.  So I first tried some type of design to evoke steps.  I didn't know what colors to use so I just used the colors off of the Cincinnati flag.  Two attempts are shown below.

FLAG 1

The jaggy Atari graphics looking things are meant to signify steps zig zagging back and forth up the Mt. Adams hillside. The colors are from the Cincinnati flag. I lifted the style of the steps from this flag which is a break away region of Azerbaijan of ethnic Armenians called Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.  Their flag is below.

There is a great page on British flags, by the way, called the UK Flag Registry.  Apparently, there was a push several years ago for counties and cities without official flags to design their own, and there are some really good ones out there.  Anyway, I saw this flag for Staining in Lancashire England  which made me think stairs again.

So I took that basic design and Cincinatified it with the Cincy colors and symbols.

FLAG 2

The axe thingy is a fasces by the way.  It is a Roman symbol of power, often used by governments.  There is a statue of Cincinnatus down at Sawyer Point, holding the fasces.  

I was not very happy with this one, though.  It looks a little cheap (I can't imagine why, I made it in Paint for crying out loud!).  Also, although it has clearly not reached the infamy of the swastika, the fasces was used by facist Italy as their symbol and has fallen out of favor a bit as a governmental symbol. 

Then I tried to do something tied to Adams.  I looked up the Adams family crest, don't know if THE John Quincy Adams family used this crest, but here it is below.

So I took the flag of England and put five yellow stars on it.

FLAG 3

And tried another version with Cincinnati blue substituted for the white background.

FLAG 4

Then I read about how Nicholas Longworth originally used Mt. Adams as a vineyard, so I tried adding a vineyard theme by putting grape bunches into the four corners of the flag, like the Quebec flag.  Since the image I used for the grapes was purple with a green leaf, I also changed the color of the St. George's cross and stars.

FLAG 5

But this seemed like there might be too much going on, so I tried two options. 

First reduce the stars down to just the center one.

FLAG 6

But this removes the Adams reference, so I tried reducing the grape images to just the canton (upper left corner in flag speak) instead.

FLAG 7

I tried the above three designs with a different grape graphic and color scheme.

FLAG 8

FLAG 9

FLAG 10

But then I came across a grape graphic that I really like from 

Here's How All 50 State Flags Would Look As App Icons 

for their Connecticut app icon.  Remember, I am not good at graphic design so I have to steal these images.
By the way here is the Connecticut flag with its grape vines on it.

And here is the website re-visioning of the flag as an app icon.


The translation of the Latin is "He who transplanted, sustains" a slogan that would work for immigrants anywhere, including those who immigrated to Mt. Adams.

So I took one more attempt at the three templates above.

FLAG 11

FLAG 12

And finally

FLAG 13

 A cross with a symbol in the canton is a classic English flag style that sill would have been familiar to many of Mt. Adams first residents.  The grape graphic of the last three is obviously superior (being designed by a graphic designer) and I actually like the maroon and green colors of the last three flags.  So the official symbolism of the flag is the grapes to symbolize the origins of Mt. Adams and the cross and stars as a reference to John Quincy Adams, for which the neighborhood is named.  The stars also work as a reference to the Cincinnati Observatory originally atop the hill.

As always, vote and leave comments below. 

Mount Airy

This week is Mt. Airy known for its huge park and water tower.  A map of Mt. Airy’s location is below.

Again neighborhood signs are a good place to start to see how the neighborhood chooses to identify itself.  See Mt. Airy’s below.

No surprise there.  Here is a photo of the famed water tower.

So the flag must have the water tower on it.  This is where my lack of artistic skills really hit me.  I tried recreating the tower in Paint but it looked terrible.  So then I used this Aberdeen flag with a castle on it as the basis for remaking the water tower out of it.

I moved things around to resemble the water tower more and got this.

FLAG 1

Then I tried to use the green from their neighborhood sign and to represent Mt. Airy Forest.   I also lifted the border from the Quebec City flag because it added to the castle feel (the city still has some old defensive walls around it) and it is just a great flag.  Let’s take a moment to appreciate the awesome Quebec City flag below

And here is my flag stealing from Aberdeen and Quebec City

FLAG 2

It would be great if someone could do a nice simple version of the water tower that did it more justice but that’s what you’re going to get from me.  Not a lot to choose from this week.

Comments and suggestions below please.  And don’t forget to vote!

Kennedy Heights

Kennedy Heights is like a sister neighborhood to my Pleasant Ridge on our eastern (feels like northern though) border.  The map locating Kennedy Heights is below.

Few neighborhoods have a distinctive symbol already associated with them but Kennedy Heights does and they’ve had it for a long time.  They use the ying yang for their neighborhood symbol and even wrote a little story on its history here.   I remember seeing these signs when I lived in Pleasant Ridge the first time 8 years ago.

 As you can see from the picture above, the original version was black and white and had the lettering in it.  Just within the past couple years, the Kennedy Heights Community Council put up a new version of the logo on their new signs.  Here is a link to the Council’s webpage story and a picture of the newer signs below.

It’s a little hard to see the updating ying yang so here is a picture from the web page.

It looks like a Miami Dolphins fan got charged with updating the logo!  Anyway, my first attempts actually used the old black and white ying yang as the base.

FLAG 1

I thought of this one like the flag of Japan, except the rising sun is replaced with the ying yang.

Then I tried to add a bit more definition to the flag and based this one off of the Israeli flag

FLAG 2

Now there is white above the black bars like on the Israeli flag.

Then a simple tweak, taking out the dots from the ying yang.

FLAG 3

Next, I tried a few using the updated Miami Dolphins colors

FLAG 4

Again, there are white bars above the colored bars.

Removing the white bars and cleaning up the ying yang image a bit (by taking it from South Korea's flag) gave

FLAG 5

Then I tweaked the colors a bit by actually using Miami Dolphin colors which I think I prefer and....

FLAG 6

Finally I tried two crazy loud flags that I am not a fan of but thought I would throw up here anyway.

FLAG 7

The above flag is based on the flag of St. Petersburg Florida.  Seen here

One last attempt is the one below.

FLAG 8

I went back to my second Pleasant Ridge flag trying to use that saltire but I don’t think it works here.  I definitely like the darker Miami Dolphin colors compared to the ones I took from the website.  I also like the simplicity of flags 5 and 6, they are nice and clean.  

Please leave comments/suggestions/submissions below.

Mount Lookout

This week’s neighborhood is Mount Lookout.  If you are a teenager from the Westside, a map is below.

 This is neighborhood that I could actually see residents proudly (proudly in both the positive and negative connotation) flying flags outside their homes.  It would also be interesting (if there were actually neighborhood flags) to see who would fly this flag versus a Hyde Park flag in the often disputed neighborhood boundary discussions. 

Now good places to start for the idea for a neighborhood flag are

1.   Neighborhood banners (if there are any)
2.   Welcome to …. Neighborhood signs.
3.  Community council webpages.

So here is a neighborhood banner.

And a welcome to sign

And the logo from the community council webpage

So, it is clear Mt. Lookout identifies themselves with the Cincinnati Observatory quite heavily so any good flag would have that on it.

I started with a simple flag and took the Cincinnati Observatory logo (don’t sue me Dean Regas) and made this first attempt.

FLAG 1

I took out the words from the logo as per the rules for a good flag.  This picture of the observatory is more stylized than the three above and works better on a flag.

It felt like it needed something more so I tried adding some color to the flag like these three below.

FLAG 2

FLAG 3

FLAG 4

Then I decided to incorporate stars because they are a common flag element and what the observatory is often looking at and created the this below.

FLAG 5

Then to try and simplify it down to a two toned flag I used white instead of gold stars

FLAG 6

I can't decide which of the last two I prefer.  FLAG 6 is simpler which is good, but the splash of color from the yellow stars in FLAG 5 is also nice.

Please leave comments/suggestions/designs below and vote for your favorite.

Happy Canada Day! (one day late)

On July 1 1867, the Province of Canada was officially created by the British Parliament.  It is considered the birthday of the nation.  I do not have a large Canadian flag to put up.  But I did put up my small one in my pot of petunias.

By the way, Canada Day is analogous to Independence Day.  The Canadians do have a flag day like us, theirs being on February 11.

Canada has one of the best flag improvements in history.  Here is the Canadian flag up to 1965.


Too too much going on! A whole other country's flag in the canton is not good even if you still have strong cultural and political ties to that nation.  The crest throws in English, Scottish, Irish, French, and finally Canadian references.  In 1946 the Canadian parliament recommend to Canadify the flag a bit by changing it to this

An improvement for sure, but this one never actually happened.  The Quebecois were one group who objected, saying they didn't want any "foreign" symbols on the flag.

In 1964 the debate came up again and it was heated.  Many Canadian had fought and died under the old flag in many wars, most recently World War II and the Korean War.  But the majority of Canadian citizens polled wanted their own distinct national flag and what we got was one of the great national flags in the world.

Thank God they did not go with this finalist


What a great example of how flag design can go horribly wrong when too many politicians are involved trying to please everybody.

Anyway,
   Happy Canada Day to our friendly neighbors to the north!