I spent two weeks last winter in the basement of the Portland city archives, pulling out every municipal flag proposal since 1969. There were fourteen of them. Thirteen were rejected. The one that passed — a green-and-gold field bearing the city seal — violates every principle the North American Vexillological Association codified in their 2006 guidebook. It is the kind of flag you hang sideways at a press conference because nobody can tell which end is up.
The Five Principles Are Not Suggestions
NAVA's guide lists five rules: keep it simple, use meaningful symbolism, use two or three basic colors, no lettering or seals, and be distinctive. These are not aesthetic preferences but functional requirements. A flag must be recognizable at fifty meters, drawable by a child, and reproducible in monochrome. When Chicago adopted its current design in 1917 — two horizontal blue stripes on a white field, four red stars — it accidentally produced one of the most effective civic symbols in North America.