How You Can Help Decide the City of Evansville’s New Flag

Back in August of 2020, a group of Evansville residents got together and decided the city's official flag was in desperate need of an upgrade. So, they created the Evansville Flag Project and encouraged all city residents to submit a drawing or concept of what they would like the new flag to look like. After receiving a number of submissions, a group of local designers used them as inspiration to create a number of designs which they narrowed down to four finalists, and now they're asking you to help pick which will represent our city.

Truth be told, the current flag is pretty — blah. Similar to the Indiana state flag, it's a navy blue flag with the city's seal in yellow smack dab in the middle. That's it. There's nothing wrong with it, per se, it just doesn't have much, let's say, pizazz. Not that we need some loud, neon-colored flag that looks like the Las Vegas Strip, but something with a little more pop couldn't hurt. Our city has grown tremendously since it was first founded by Hugh McGary, Jr. over 200 years ago, and the time has come to get ourselves a flag that represents that growth.

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The four finalists you can vote for all use the same color scheme; dark blue, light blue, gold, and white. Each of which represents the following aspects of the city we call home, according to the Evansville Flag Project.

• Gold: The industriousness and ingenuity of our community in the past, present, and future.

• Dark blue: The natural elements and waterways present in our community.

• Light blue: The aspiration for freedom, unity, and a community for everyone who visits or lives here.

• White: Peace and prosperity - whether by the original Indigenous inhabitants of the land, by our families and ancestors through their efforts during World War II, by the present-day community, or the lives of generations to come.

Each design also incorporates in some way, the Four Freedoms Monument, the city's native heritage, a crescent to signify our status as the "Crescent City" (due to where we sit on the Ohio River), and both five and eight-pointed stars which represent certain characteristics and milestone events in the city's history. For example, the city's founding by McGary, Jr. in 1812, and the city's place in the World War II effort both home and abroad.

Let's take a look at the four designs we get to choose from. They don't appear to have official names on the Project's voting page, so I've given them each one based on what I see.

Four Freedoms with Eight-Point Star

If I'm interpreting this correctly, the Four Freedoms Monument is represented by the four horizontal light blue lines on the right. It sits on a crescent base to represent the Ohio River, with the eight-point star prominently featured on the left and serving as the design's focal point.

Four Freedoms with Crescent

Here the Four Freedoms sit on the crescent shape much as they do in real life on Riverside Drive. The star is less pronounced here, serving more like a small sun in the sky.

Four Stars with Crescent

Instead of columns, four - five-pointed stars serve double-duty as a nod to the Monument with a yellow crescent representing our location in the state.

Four Freedoms with River Wave

Similar to Four Freedoms with Crescent above, this design alters the crescent in the middle to look like the waves of the Ohio River and places the star directly above the columns representing the monument instead of placing it off-center.

Now that you've had a chance to look them over, visit the Evansville Flag Project website between now and July 1st, 2021 to vote on your favorite. The winning design will be announced during an event on July 3rd before being celebrated and flown for the first time on August 12th. Why August 12th, because when you write it out numerically, it becomes 8-12, like our area code. Pretty clever, right?

[Source: Evansville Flag Project]