Symbolically speaking, a flag is worth the effort

As I’ve been watching the reaction to the public hearing today on reverting from our contemporary Maine state flag (blue flag with state seal) to the “1901” version (buff flag with pine and star), there is a line-of-thought that I’d like to offer my response to, especially since it will certainly come up in the effort to revise Portland’s city flag as well.

Aren’t there more important things for the legislature to do? This is just a waste of time and money!

Of course the legislature should focus on taxes, public safety, infrastructure, etc, etc. However our elected officials are also capable of briefly considering symbolically important items, such as the flag.

After all, flags have value. As Jeremy Hammond, the designer of the flag for the City of Bath pointed out to me, “In the midst of the American Civil War, the Confederacy paused to redesign their flag MULTIPLE times, it was that important to them.” (Side note- the flag we commonly associate with the Confederacy was not their “national” flag).

Similarly corporations, whose motive is literally to make as much profit as possible, spend thousands upon thousands of dollars developing their brands, even though they could technically function just fine without a logo or visual identity.

If we think of flags as part of the brand of a city or state (and I say part, as there is much more that goes into forming the image of region), then the deficiencies of the current Maine and Portland flags become that much more obvious.

Imagine for just a second that instead of using the famous Stars-and-Stripes motif of the American flag, as a nation, we just decided to put our seal-on-a-bedsheet (after all, surely our Founding Mothers and Fathers had more important things to focus on). Would you feel as inspired to pledge allegiance to this:

I mean, it’s got all the qualities of a great flag, right? It’s blue… and has the seal… and… erm.

Perhaps the feedback on that design was that it was a bit too hard to make out the details of the seal and decipher which country is represented (hey great point). One choice would be to come up with a unique, strong, bold visual statement that is immediately identifiable. The other choice would be to slap a caption on it:

There we go, unquestionably belongs to the US of A… though now I’m wondering why we bother with that seal when we could free up more space for text.

Maine and Portland both have flags already, and they are fine, in that they serve their basic purpose. However, with just a little more effort they could be strong visual reminders of how unique and special these places are to the people who live here, and to the people who wish they did.

If you feel similarly, please reach out to your representatives regarding the issue of reverting to the 1901 Maine Flag, and if you want to help out the effort here in Portland to revise our flag, drop us a note in the comments below or reach out to us through the contacts page.