The Cincy Flags team knows the power of community pride as well as any loyal Queen City resident. Led by Cincinnati Neighborhood Games founder Henry Frondorf and graphic designers Joshua Mattie and Chris Cliff-Perbix, they’ve spent the past year-and-a-half designing unique flags for all of Cincinnati’s 52 neighborhoods.
Tonight they’ll premiere the results of the project at a free unveiling party at Over-the-Rhine's Findlay Market (1801 Race St.) from 4-8 p.m. The flags are open source, meaning that everyone from single individuals to neighborhood councils can produce them, as well as any other merchandise bearing the designs. (Check out the Facebook event page for more info.)
Backed by a $10,000 Engage Cincy Challenge Grant from the City of Cincinnati –– which was then matched by the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation –– Cincy Flags' team of designers spent the better part of a year crowdsourcing through online surveys, meetings and workshops throughout Cincinnati’s communities to find what residents valued most about their neighborhoods and how they’d like their homes to be represented visually.
“The grant that we won is a place-making grant,” Cliff-Perbix previously told CityBeat. “So the idea is that these flags get adopted and people want to fly them and as you traverse the city, you’ll have a visual representation of where you’re going.”
Using community feedback, designers created distinct flags for each neighborhood, all while following the official rules of good flag design, according to the North American Vexillological Association, an organization defined by their “common enthusiasm for flags."
A preliminary design for Paddock Hills included a blue wave pattern to represent its swim club and a crown formed from the shape of a pin oak leaf, the type of tree that was planted at every house when the neighborhood was established. A draft for the West End included red and white for Taft High School, and designs for Over-the-Rhine featured Music Hall’s Rose Window.
"It’s a really cool moment to get all the neighborhoods together for something that isn’t a pressing political concern or something that’s demanding a transaction from them," Mattie previously told CityBeat. "Let’s just get together and talk about our neighborhoods and how they’re all cool. All 52 of them.”
