The Quest to Redesign Washington’s State Flag — and Honor Its Natural Landscape

The flag is color-blocked in half lengthwise, with sky blue on top and forest green on the bottom, representing the state’s landscape. On the left, five overlapping triangles represent the five volcanic mountains in the Cascades, all of which have glaciers. The triangles extend into straight lines on the right, which pay homage to the orchards and agricultural livelihoods in the eastern part of the state. Finally, atop the mountains Lockhart placed a compass rose, meant to represent the history of navigation in the Puget Sound. “I really did want it to be purely geographic, so that it felt like it could stand the test of time.” Lockhart explained. “It’s hard to create a symbol of people and culture that doesn’t feel that at some point, eventually, it’s going to be dated.”

In the face of a warming climate that has caused some of the glaciers atop those mountains to have almost completely disappeared, Lockhart hopes that his flag offers a symbol of what once was, as well as all there is to save. “Having a flag that is this pure, real version of Washington, could be seen as somewhat of a pledge to try and preserve it.”

In the years since, Lockhart has pushed for the state of Washington to adopt a new flag, whether the design is his or someone else’s. He began by publishing his design for a new state flag on social media. His posts elicited strong reactions — clearly, he’d struck a nerve. “It made some people excited, and it made some people upset,” he recalled. But Lockhart was unfazed, recalling that the same thing happened when he put forth his redesign for Bellingham’s flag. “At first, people hated it. Now you can’t walk down the street in Bellingham without seeing the flag.”

According to Ted Kaye, a vexillologist — a person who studies flags — strong public reactions are simply part of the flag redesign process. “You’re losing a flag that people are accustomed to. I call it the ‘ugly baby syndrome,’” Kaye said in an interview with GlacierHub. “Every mother loves her baby. She thinks her baby is beautiful, even though it could be the ugliest baby ever. But she’s been looking at that baby over and over and over again. And she’s used to seeing it. And so, the same thing happens with those state flags. I’m used to seeing it; I grew up saluting that flag. I love that flag, even though it’s an ugly flag, or a poorly designed flag.”

From a design perspective, Kaye views Washington’s current flag as a mixed bag. “On the positive side, Washington’s got the only state flag that’s green,” he said, noting that the trees and forests of the state make the color logical. However, he notes that the seal doesn’t make much sense. “The seal belongs to the government. But the flag belongs to the people.” Kaye argued that a flag with a seal emblazoned on it makes it harder to fly in front of your private home. “People use these flags to represent their belonging to the state, not their connection to the government.”

But Kaye warned that the design case might not be strong enough to prompt a redesign. Not all flags follow the same pathway to an official redesign — and not all approaches are equally successful. In his years of experience advising on flag redesigns across the country, Kaye has seen two primary motivators for changing a state flag. The first arises when a flag is deemed offensive, like the old Mississippi or Georgia state flags that contained the Confederate battle flag, or Massachusetts’ current state flag that depicts violence towards Native Americans on its seal. Kaye says those redesign processes typically garner more political support in state legislatures, given the risks associated with supporting offensive symbols.

And then there’s pushing to change a state flag on the basis of design itself. “The redesigning of a flag because it’s a poor design is a much heavier political lift,” Kaye explained. “But that’s what Brad Lockhart is trying to do in Washington.”

Lockhart, for his part, remains optimistic. The Kickstarter he launched in October promoting and selling the new state flag design raised more than two times its goal. Outside of Washington, Utah recently decided to redesign its flag on the basis of design, and that process is nearing completion. Critically, Utah’s redesign relied on multiple rounds of public and artistic input — something Lockhart has said he’s open to pursuing with the state. Ultimately, Lockhart sees this process as much more than switching out the piece of fabric flying in front of a building. “I like to tell people that, yeah, the flag is a symbol of pride. But it’s also a symbol of obligation — obligation to the ecosystem, and to the neighborhood, and to your fellow community members,” he said. “If you’re flying a flag, then you’re proud of where you live, and then you should be nice to the people there, you should care about the environment, you should care about the culture — it just creates this connection to where you are.”

Kaye also believes that well-designed flags have a social impact, though in a slightly different way. “I believe that we can tell when a city or state flag has been truly embraced by the population it represents when we start seeing it show up as a tattoo,” he said. “And I’ll tell you, I don’t think there are any tattoos of the Washington state flag.”

With the 100th anniversary of Washington’s state flag approaching on March 5, Lockhart feels like there may be real momentum to make a flag redesign happen. But to him, the first stage of the process has already been achieved — getting people talking about the state flag in a critical, thoughtful way.