C.U.F. (or Clifton Heights, University Heights, and Fairview)

So back in the day, before everybody had a car and had to walk everywhere, the neighborhoods were smaller.  These neighborhoods (Clifton Heights, University Heights, and Fairvew) are small enough that the city groups them together as C.U.F in a way that allows them to retain their own identities.  I also think they are grouped together because only Clifton Heights has a business district.  See a map of C.U.F. below.


Below is a map of that area subdivided into the three neighborhoods


Since C.U.F. is unique in its counting as one neighborhood, while still giving recognition to the original 3 neighborhoods, it made me think of the flag of the United Kingdom, the Union Jack.  Not only is it a cool looking flag, but how it came about it really cool too, so quick history lesson.

This is the flag of England, the cross of St. George.


This is the flag of Scotland, a separate kingdom at many points of history and immediately before 1603.  It is the cross of St. Andrew.


So when king James VI inherited both the throne of England and Scotland, he combined the kingdoms and he combined the flags.  The flag was thus named the Union Flag, representing a union of two nations, A jack is a small flag flown from the bow of a ship.  The monarch would use the flag in this manner so it became commonly known as the Union Jack.


This is the flag that would have flown over the American colonies before independence.

Later, in 1801, they decided to give recognition to Northern Ireland, another country in the United Kingdom.  Northern Ireland's flag is below.  It is called the Cross of St. Patrick


Adding that in gives us the flag we know and love today.


Interestingly, the flag fails to recognize the fourth country in the U.K., Wales.  Wales flag is below.


Some have suggested this


But let's get back to C.U.F.  I took this idea and reversed engineered this one.  That's cheating I know, but I like the idea of a flag that is a combination of other flags.

So here is the flag for Clifton Heights.

Clifton Heights was heavily settled by Germans, who influenced the early culture there. In fact, Clifton Heights has a mural that says Wilkommen-Clifton Heights.

So the colors of the Clifton Heights flag come from the German flag.  The red chevron represents the hill that defines the neighborhood.

Fairview is right next door, and also known for its German heritage.  The Fairview German school used to be in the neighborhood before it moved to Clifton.  (Although, looking at the map above, it seems to me that by those boundaries, the school was actually in Clifton Heights, being east of Ravine.  Maybe a long time resident of the area could clarify for me).  So here is Fairview's flag.

Again, the colors are from the German flag.  The inverted yellow chevron forms a V for the great View in FairView.  (I'm forcing it I know)

Finally, University Heights, as its name suggests, closely identifies itself with the University of Cincinnati.  The colors of U.C. are red, black, and white.  So putting these colors on a simple cross gives University Height's flag.

Now that the three neighborhoods are joined into one C.U.F.  the three flags get combined.  We take the black background and white cross from the University Heights flag.  We take the red chevron from the Clifton Heights flag and interlock it with the yellow inverted chevron from the Fairview flag.  You get the flag below.

FLAG 1

A different flag possibility, with a different reverse engineering could be.

Clifton Heights

Fairview

University Heights

And the Grand Union flag of C.U.F. 

FLAG 2

FLAG 1's color contrast a bit better I think.  

Then I wanted to try out the Uptown colors on this flag idea.  Remember, the pan-Uptown colors come from this logo.

  

So using these colors you could get...

Clifton Heights

Fairview

University Heights.

And merging them all into a CUF Union gives you the third flag

FLAG 3

Or you could do flags that emphasized the orange over the blue.

Clifton Heights

Fairview

University Heights

And the orange emphasizing Union CUF flag.

FLAG 4

Finally, I already made Mt. Auburn flags that focused on the Uptown Blue.  I made a suggestion in the Corryville post that they might want to emphasize the Uptown Orange to give themselves some distinction.  Well maybe CUF would want to emphasize the Uptown Green for the same reasons.  So the last group of flags is

Clifton Heights.

Fairview

University Heights.

And that gives you a Grand Union CUF flag of 

FLAG 5

Please Rock the Vote to be a good citizen and leave comments below.

East Walnut Hills

I worked at Purcell Marian for four years which is in East Walnut Hills, so I have spent a lot of time there.  EWH is small and contains gorgeous mansions on beautiful tree lined streets.  There is also a much less affluent section of EWH so it is a neighborhood with extremes when it comes to wealth.  The EWH business district has been making a small come back recently as they try to take advantage of the beautiful architecture in the neighborhood.  East Walnut Hills started as its own incorporated city in 1866 with the name Woodburn, like the main street of the business district.  I have not been able to find when it was annexed into Cincinnati and why and when the name changed from Woodburn to East Walnut Hills.  It is kind of a shame because Woodburn would give it a bit more distinction.


A picture of a "welcome to.." sign is below.  You can see they symbols they are using are squirrels eating walnuts with walnut tree leaves on there as well.  You will see smaller versions of this sign at different entrances to the neighborhood, but they all have the squirrel, nut, and leaves on them.


So I went looking for a flag to steal a squirrel off of for my flag.  I came across a fantastic flag from Ufa Russia.


That's perfect, and I doubt anyone from Ufa will care.  So my first attempt was to make it more like the sign and add a walnut and some walnut tree leaves.

FLAG 1

Next, to try and to something other than just paste images on an existing flag (but still heavily plagiarize), I tried a few more things.  One idea I had was to develop pan-Walnut Hills colors.  I could not find a East Walnut Hills community council page to get ideas.  But plain ol' Walnut Hills did.  On their community council page they had this logo.

So I am going to use these blue/green/orange colors as the pan-Walnut Hills colors.  Now that I look at it, they are actually not too different from the blue, orange, and green of the pan-Uptown colors I've used.

Here are two tricolors to compare the colors.  Uptown on top.  Walnut Hills on bottom.

Walnut Hills is not considered part of uptown by the way.  But it might make sense that they could use similar colors because Walnut Hills does border the Uptown neighborhoods of Mt. Auburn, Corryvile, and Avondale.  Just as a side note, I think the Walnut Hills colors are more pleasing.

Anyway, here is a second attempt.  Using the Canadian flag's ratios as a template because that is a good way to have a tricolor with an image in the middle.

FLAG 2

Then changing up some colors.

FLAG 3

Then I went back to the first flag and simply recolored it with the pan-Walnut Hills colors.  I made the squirrel the tannish/orangish color because that seemed plausible.  But it doesn't look as good as the brown squirrel.

FLAG 4

It is customary, by the way, that when a flag has an animal on it, the head of the animal is always on the hoist (flag pole) side.  The rumored reason for this is so that if the flag is hanging limp in the wind, the only thing you see isn't the animals rump!

Finally I wanted to try something without the squirrel, although I really like that idea for a symbol.  I went back to the original name of the neighborhood of Woodburn.  I thought of wood burning and then of the Burning Bush.  I found this cool burning bush graphic on the internet and used it to create the Woodburn flag.

FLAG 5

I love this flag.  I love the graphic and the colors work better in this set up, than they do on most of the other flags I feel.  It made we go back and try one more squirrel set up.

FLAG 6

That might be the best of the squirrel flags using the pan-Walnut Hills colors, but it still doesn't look as cool as the bush I think.

Please vote and comment and all that stuff.

Camp Washington

If you had to guess how Camp Washington got its name, you'd probably get pretty close to the right answer.  The neighborhood was once the site of a military camp named after George Washington.  It was a training camp for soldiers in the Mexican-American War.  Camp Washington today might be most famous for Camp Washington Chili, seen many times on going to commercial shots of Monday and Sunday Night Football games.  A map of Camp Washington is below.


The most obvious angle to work with this flag is the Washington angle.  There is a mural in Camp Washington that is "campy" with Washington on it.


The North American Vexillogical Association ranked US city flags.  They picked 150 of the biggest cities in the country and reviewed their flags.  Cincinnati came in 22nd by the way.  The number one flag in the country went to Washington D.C.  The flag is below.

This flag is based off of George Washington's family coat of arms.  The coat of arms is below.


If this is the best city flag in the country, then it is a good flag to work from.  In my personal opinion, it is a great flag.
1. Simple enough a kid can draw it from memory.
2. Meaningful symbols, tying to Washington for whom the city is named.
3. Only 2 colors.
4. No lettering or seals.
5. Is distinctive among US flags.


The first attempt I made was to parallel this flag very closely.  The only change I made was to switch the red bars to red waves to parallel the Cincinnati flag as well.  The result is below.

FLAG 1

But this might be TOO close to the Washington D.C. flag.  So to differintiate it a bit more AND to parallel the Cincinnati flag a bit more, I changed the waves to blue.  It still resembles the Washington coat of arms and looks like the Cincinnati flag.

FLAG 2

I then tried something I have tried before, and took the Cincinnati flag and recolored it, switching the blue and the red.  The C could now stand for Camp Washington.  This was not distinct enough for me from the Cincinnati flag and others I've created but I show it below to show the creative process.  Still, if you like it, you can vote for it.

FLAG 3

To make the above flag reference the Washington flag, I removed the middle wave.  That get's us back to two bars/waves like the D.C. flag.  Then I put in the three stars to complete the coat of arms reference.

FLAG 4

Below is just a simple color swap out of curiosity, but it loses its references to the Washington flag a little without the white background.

FLAG 5

Then, I went back to FLAG 3.  This time to reference Washington, I just put his silhouette in the middle of the C.  Now we have a overt reference to Cincinnati and the C stands for Camp and the silhouette makes it Camp Washington.  

FLAG 6

Finally, I tried a very similar approach, but put a W in the middle of the C to stand for Camp Washington.  Lettering is bad, I know, but I just wanted to try it.  It looks a bit like a corporate logo, though.

FLAG 7

I welcome votes/comments/submissions!