CHAMPAIGN — Nearly 5,000 designs were submitted for Illinois’ state flag contest, and Champaign-based Clanin Creative‘s design has made it as one of the top ten finalists.
Morning Edition host Kimberly Schofield spoke with Clanin Creative’s director Scott Clanin and graphic designer Colleen Hayes about the design process — and why they feel Illinois could benefit from updating its state flag.
Audio PlayerThis interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
SCHOFIELD: As people who usually help others create designs with your company, what was it like for employees to come together and work on something for themselves, for a contest?
CLANIN: It was really exciting. I think we all collectively knew we wanted to go into this with this team mentality so we can share different ideas, provide transparent feedback to each other. We all, as a group, really studied Illinois. We evaluated a ton of different symbolism, but at the end of the day, we wanted to make sure that you pointed to anything on any of the designs that we submitted and it had deep meaning to it.
HAYES: Yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun, especially working as a team, just having different ideas and input throughout.
SCHOFIELD: Colleen, were you the person who ultimately came up with the idea for the design that’s in the final 10?
HAYES: Yes.
SCHOFIELD: How did you come up with that?
HAYES: Beginning the design process, I knew I wanted to focus on agriculture because that’s kind of the Illinois that I know, and I think a lot of us do, and being in the central part of Illinois kind of surrounded by corn fields. I wanted to make sure that was a focus, but also be able to represent our state’s history and everyone within the state.
CLANIN: We wanted to make sure with all of our designs that even though this is ag focused … ag is one of our huge economic drivers in the state that we wanted to celebrate, but we wanted to make sure that everyone, whether they live in northern Illinois or southern Illinois, felt represented. With this kind of three star concept representing northern, central and southern Illinois, we felt that was the core concept to ensure that everyone felt represented in the design.
SCHOFIELD: Would you mind describing it with the colors and the stripes and everything for those who are listening?
HAYES: Yeah, so there’s 21 stripes to represent our state being the 21st and then there are three stars that represent the northern, central, and southern part of Illinois. And the points on the star equal 18, which represents our state’s founding in 1818. The sun is just kind of a nod to our current state flag. There’s a sun rising on our current flag seal, so just kind of a little symbolism that will connect us to our possibly past state flag.
SCHOFIELD: What was the response like within Clanin Creative when you heard back from the Flag Commission?
HAYES: We were really excited. It had been a while since it was submitted, and you’re kind of always unsure, but it was awesome to see that one of the designs made it in the top 10.
CLANIN: One thing I do want to mention is in regards to the topic of ‘why change the Illinois state flag?’ We’ve been getting that question asked a lot. Our flag has been around … I believe there was revision to add the word “Illinois” to that flag in the 60s, if I’m not mistaken, but we’ve had that flag for about 100 years or so. And when it comes to best practices for flag design, our flag consistently ranks worse across countrywide contests because we actually use our state seal as the design for our flag. That will still be the seal of Illinois. They’ll still see that on websites and official documents, so the seal itself isn’t going away.
You don’t want to use a very detailed seal for a flag. A flag should symbolize and signal something from a distance. The seal has a lot of fine details in it that just doesn’t work well for scalability purposes and so a lot of those elements are lost if you look at it from a distance. That’s why Illinois is looking at redesigning a new state flag. Many other states have redesigned their state flag. The question that I’ve been asking a lot of people [is], ‘Can you name three people that fly the Illinois flag outside their home?’
SCHOFIELD: I cannot.
CLANIN: Right? I don’t think I can name one person. But if you go to Texas, all you see is the state flag. There are some incredible state flag designs that, because of how simple and how bold that design is, there’s a great sense of state flag pride. You’ll see that outside of homes, on different merchandise and stickers, and even some people have it tattooed on them. You just don’t see that in Illinois.
When you look at our state flag, of course, we look at it and think of home because it’s the only flag we’ve ever known. But we only ever see that flag outside of the Capitol, or maybe a school, or the DMV. And so this contest is a unique way for us to maybe unify and rally behind a really bold, cool design that can then be used on so many different applications and create a new sense of state flag pride in Illinois.
Voting for the Illinois state flag closes on February 14th, 2025. Visitors can select an option once a day.