Time for a Change
City Council Resolution R-2017-010, adopted by the Columbia City Council on January 10, 2017, established an open design competition for a new city flag. The effort, which was facilitated by the Columbia Design League and One Columbia for Arts and Culture, resulted in the submission of 547 designs.
Using one-sheets like this one, the Columbia Design League collected public submissions and offered ways for interested designers and citizens to think about how the flag should look and how it might be used.
547 Designs
Designs were received from all types of people interested in flag design including high school students and professional designers. Some submissions were created in advanced software and some were drawn in crayon. The CDL collected them by email, mail, hand delivery and social media using the hashtag #colaflag.
Then, all of the submitted designs were shared with the experts of NAVA. They reviewed every submission from the standpoint of good flag design and uniqueness and identified 19 that stood out.
The North American Vexillological Association (NAVA) is the largest flag-studies organization in the world. Their booklet, Good Flag, Bad Flag, is the definitive guide on the five principals of flag design.
Public Input
Upon expert review, 18 designs were standardized and released for public input. Interested members of the public were invited to provide numerical rankings between 1-10 for each of the designs and to provide any comments or thoughts about each design. Over 7000 responses were received on the 18 designs.
A nine-person jury of key stakeholders, designers and even the descendent of the original City of Columbia flag designer, met to discuss the expert input and public input to provide a recommendation to City Council. The jury was advised by Ted Kaye, the vexillologist that compiled Good Flag, Bad Flag.
City Council Review and Approval
After Council’s review of the finalist entries and the shared public input on designs, it was determined that additional design criteria should be considered, with the hope of arriving at finalist designs that most accurately reflect Columbia’s history and spirit. In order to reach the goal of identifying and selecting a new City of Columbia flag, the following steps were carried out.
Design Collection Process
A group of five designers — as determined by the expert, public and jury review process — were given the opportunity to submit new designs that meet the updated guidelines. Each designer received a stipend of $500 from the City of Columbia.
Designers were given approximately six weeks to produce updated designs in accordance with the expanded design criteria and may, as before, submit multiple designs. The new submissions were presented to Columbia’s mayor and City Council for a blind review, omitting disclosure of the designer’s name during evaluation.
Design Criteria Modifications
When Columbia was founded in 1786 as a new planned city to house South Carolina’s state government, Senator John Lewis Gervais proclaimed the city would be a place where residents would “find refuge under the wings of Columbia,” referring to a personified Columbia, often depicted as a goddess-like female figure. Since then, wings have continued to be a recurring symbol in the City of Columbia identity. Wings were represented as part of the city’s “rise from the ashes” following the burning of the city in February 1865; the newspaper Columbia Phoenix was established in the period following. Wings continue to be a representative image to this day in connections such as the Columbia Fireflies, which are named for the synchronous fireflies in the nearby Congaree Swamp National Park.
Flag designs were sought from the five designers that incorporated colors and/or symbols that represented contemporary Columbia and the diversity of people that live and work in the city, as well as symbols or shapes that signify wings. Designs could have also included other symbols, shapes or colors that signify other key identifiers of the City of Columbia.
Over 60 designs were submitted to City Council by the five selected designers.
Presentation
In a City Council Work Session on January 7, 2020, Lee Snelgrove, the director of One Columbia for Arts and Culture and a board member of the Columbia Design League, led the Council members through a discussion of flag design and the designs received from the selected designers.
City Council members noted their top preferences which winnowed the field of flag designs for consideration to 14 designs. Among the 14 designs, each of the five selected designers were represented with at least one of their own designs.
Discussion
On February 4, 2020, Lee Snelgrove presented again to the City of Columbia City Council regarding their top 14 preferred designs. The Council went through the options and discussed why each may have been a good representation of the city. Through discussion and to reach a consensus of council, the council members arrived at final few designs.
Decision
By the start of the regular evening meeting of City Council on February 4, the Council members had arrived at a single design that they felt represented the people of the City of Columbia. The design was adopted in a unanimous vote.
Ratification
On March 10, 2020, Columbia City Council unanimously adopted Resolution R-2020-030, which adopts the new design as the official city flag and authorizes its use by the city government and the people of Columbia to represent the City.
Designed by Nate Puza of the The Half and Half
The flag represents the three rivers, that the city is a capital city, and showcases the wing imagery sought by City Council.
From a rich history.
A flag of the past.
Adopted in 1912, the previous flag for the City of Columbia was a dark or light blue field with the city seal at the center. Around the seal were on the right, a spray of cotton and on the left, a stalk of corn with full ears and a tasseled top. The current flag was flown in very few locations, all city government-operated locations. The flag used governmental and outdated imagery.
The State Newspaper offered a prize of $75 for the winner of a contest to design a city flag in 1912. With an additional $25 provided by City Council, the total prized was $100.
The winning design was submitted by Kate Manning Magoffin, a first grade teacher. The flag included the city seal and motto, as well as a spray of cotton and a stalk of corn, to represent the two largest crops of SC at the time.