Story and photos by Stephen Zenner

TOLEDO – Immediately following Toledo city council’s vote on Jan. 7 to adopt a new flag, Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz went outside, lowered the old one, instated in 1994 by Carty Finkbeiner, and officially retired it.

Ceremoniously, Kapszukiewicz, along with the designer of the new flag, Mark Yappueying, senior manager of design for the Toledo Museum of Art, and Kid Mayor Lilly Joseph, 11, then raised the new design on Toledo’s 188th birthday. 

Yappueying smiled as he watched his design, prominently featuring a Blockhouse, Toledo’s initial settlement and trading post, sway in the brisk wind in front of 1 Government Center.

He said of his heart behind the flag, “It’s about contributing to something larger, a shared symbol of pride and unity for everyone in Toledo.”

But making something for everyone can be a punishing undertaking, and the extensive process of choosing a new flag design for Toledo has been met with criticism.

“I typically ignore social media, as you can imagine, it can be vitriolic and not very constructive,” said Nathan Mattimoe, director of art in public places for The Arts Commission. 

Mattimoe was a facilitator for Toledo’s flag design review board, and on this particular project he noted that most of the complaints he heard were ‘Why are we doing this?” and “We’re wasting money.” 

“That’s the biggest complaint I’ve heard,” he said.

Vexillology and flag designers

Before 2021, not many people thought too much about the unilaterally decided Toledo flag of the ’90s, which consisted of the City of Toledo’s seal slapped on a white background between two dark blue vertical bars. 

That version of Toledo’s flag fits easily into what Roman Mars, a prominent radio producer and designer, called an SOB or Seal On a Bedsheet in his 2015 TED Talk on poorly designed city and states flags.

A patchwork of 16 different flags with circular seals were displayed behind him during his talk, and Mars said, “If you can’t tell what city they [the flags] go to, that’s exactly the problem.” 

The push for better design in state and local flags was fueled by the brief design principles outlined in Good Flag, Bad Flag: How to Design a Great Flag. The 16-page, full-color booklet was finalized in 2001 and published in 2006 by Ted Kaye and the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA); people who study and love flags.

According to the booklet, flags should be simple, have strong representative meaning, a basic color palette, no lettering or seals, and have distinctive attributes.

Local Toledo designer Jacob Parr, who’s flag design was one of the three finalists, heard Mars’ talk on flags, circa 2015, and said of the episode that it hooked him. Soon, Parr subscribed to Kaye’s philosophy of flag design, tossing around new design ideas to replace Toledo’s 1994 ‘seal on a bedsheet.’ 

A movement, not an individual

Parr was not the only designer with a heart to rebrand their city’s forgotten or forgettable flags. Again and again, Chicago and Washington D.C.’s flags were highlighted as prime examples of how simple, strongly designed flags could help grow unity and pride for their cities. 

Designer Steve Kodis finalized a People’s Flag initiative for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, replacing a 1954 design with a new one from 2016. Cleveland is currently in the process of selecting a new People’s Flag; Mississippi finalized a new state flag design in 2021; and Minnesota followed the trend in 2024 with a new flag of their own. 

Illinois, Michigan and Maine, all of which fall into the ‘Seal On a Bedsheet’ category of flags, are in process or are discussing changing their flag designs, as well. 

“Here’s the thing about municipal seals,” Mars said in his talk, “they were designed to be on pieces of paper, where you can read them; not on flags 100 feet away flapping in the breeze.” 

Something to rally behind?

For Parr, the 2020 pandemic gave him time to work on his design, and after it was finalized, he presented a blue and white banner with a yellow spark to Kapszukiewicz in 2021.

Parr recalled that they “ushered me through an additional year-long process meeting with people across the city…” This included a final meeting in August 2022, when Parr presented his design to city council. 

“It was almost adopted as the official Toledo flag,” said Chloe Nousias, marketing communications manager for The Arts Commission. Parr’s presentation introduced his new design as, A New Toledo Flag: Something to Rally Behind.

Instead, Parr found people did not rally behind him. 

Outcry

A 2022 reddit poll of 488 people found 56 percent rejected Parr’s flag design, with more than enough “vitriolic” comments to discourage the best of intentions. User abysmalsun summed up the majority of complaints against Parr’s design:

“I’m not against a new flag, but this design is horrendous. Nothing about it speaks Toledo. Why not the Anthony Wayne Bridge, or keep Fort Industry? Also why isn’t council calling for other designers to submit ideas? This shouldn’t be just whoever knows someone gets to design the city flag.”

Outcry led city council to committee to shelve the project indefinitely until 2024. 

“I think what happened is it hit the press, and they [city council] got a little apprehensive to vote and decided to table it,” Mattimoe said. 

In the interim, friends and associates of Parr, most notably the custom clothing and design store Jupmode, began to sell Parr’s flag design in-store, while the 1994 flag was still the official design. 

“I like the flag design,” said John Amato, president and CEO of Jupmode, about Parr’s flag, which he still flies outside of Jupmode’s new location on Monroe Street. “I like it enough that we actually put it in a mosaic in the concrete in front of our building, and that will long outlast me.”

Support for Parr’s design caught a bit of growing-underground acceptance, and could be seen outside a few Uptown businesses.

Skeptics of Parr claimed he was only in it for the money, but Amato disagreed, citing that Parr was never given any money from Jupmode for his flag design or its use, at least not from his company. 

The search process

The search for a new Toledo flag resumed at the beginning of 2024.

“The mayor decided that he would like to pursue a new process, which would be a kind of an open contest, where folks were able to submit designs that would be considered [for the new flag of Toledo],” Mattimoe said. “So, he reached out to us [The Arts Commission].”

“There’s a handful of cities that have either just recently gone through a flag redesign or are in process,” Mattimoe continued. “We adapted some of their practices, which we would consider ‘best practices’ to guide us through the process.”

Proposals for the new designs had to be made by residents of Toledo proper, which disqualified 19 of the original 87 submissions. Of the remaining 68 eligible designs, a review board was put together to whittle down the entries. All submitted designs, with the exception of Parr, since he had already revealed his design, remained anonymous to the review board. 

The nine voting members of the review board were:

Dan Hernandez: Board president for The Arts Commission and University of Toledo professor

Carrie Hartman: Toledo City Council president

Tedd Long: Toledo historian

Terwase Ngur: main branch manager for the Toledo Lucas County Public Library

Laura Kaprowski: CEO of Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority (TARTA)

Valerie White: local artist

Tiffany Whitman: director of the Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the City of Toledo

Kelli Fischer: research associate for the Toledo Museum of Art

Kapszukiewicz: Toledo mayor

The review board was facilitated by these non-voting members:

Rachel Hart: director of communication for the City of Toledo’s Mayor's Office

Marc Folk: president and CEO for The Arts Commission

Mattimoe: director of Art in Public Places for The Arts Commission

Ben Cook: project manager of Art in Public Places for The Arts Commission

When the review board got down to 10 designs, those flags were shared with the public for feedback. 

“We created a form online to collect folk’s feedback on the designs. What people liked, what they didn’t,” Mattimoe said. “It played a big role in that final decision.”

Mattimoe managed an info booth to receive feedback on the flags during all three days of the Momentum Festival. 

Altogether, The Arts Commission received more than 300 responses to the designs. 

“327 people committed their opinions to the process,” said Marc Folk, president and CEO of The Arts Commission, when presenting the process of flag design selection to the city council for approval. “The committee met again in October, reviewed the public input and narrowed submissions to three finalists.” 

Those three finalists were Parr, Jillian Hupp and Yappueying.

And we have a winner!

Last week during the city council meeting, anticipation was evident as all three designs were presented with their designer’s names below the flags. And it was Yappueying’s design that filled the city council TV screens to announce him the winner. 

After expressing thanks, Yappueying read a summary of the representations and symbolisms in his flag. 

“Central to the design was a modernization of the ‘Blockhouse,’ a representation of Toledo’s historical roots and industrial strength,” Yappueying explained to city council. 

Yappueying’s use of the term “Blockhouse” led Councilwoman Cerssandra McPherson to ask for an elaboration on what he meant by Blockhouse.

When Yappueying clarified that “Blockhouse” was another name for Fort Industry, the original trading post and first settlement in Toledo she relented, seemingly satisfied. The historical nod to Fort Industry, or Blockhouse, appeared to be a major reason for the selection of Yappueying’s design. 

“The Blockhouse is something that is recognizable, and the committee felt it created a lineage in the history of the city of Toledo’s flag,” Mattimoe said. “I think that was a big part of it.”

After the new design was passed by city ordinance, Kapszukiewicz displayed the 1909 design, the 1994 design and Yappueying’s design next to each other in the lobby of 1 Government Center for comparison. 

“Even as we change, there is a thread of continuity through the designs,” Kapszukiewicz said, pointing at each flag and the similar features between each one. 

“It is interesting how similar the new flag is to our first flag in 1909. It’s the same colors: red, white and blue, with the Blockhouses— It’s really very similar.”

A single dissenter

Unlike the review board, the city council vote was not unanimous. The vote stood 9 to 1, with councilman George Sarantou dissenting on the grounds that he did not feel the review board had received enough feedback from the public. 

“Our next council meeting is on January 14, next Tuesday. Give the citizens an opportunity to weigh in with their opinions on the proposed flag,” he advised.

“We’re a city of maybe 280,000 people, and only 327 people ventured an opinion, plus the committee,” he said. “I just felt that we ought to give the citizens, the taxpayers, an opportunity to weigh in on this, because this affects everybody.”

Whether or not it was in a city council session, Toledoans did weigh in on the newly adopted flag design – online or in local newspapers.

Reddit user EmbraceBass commented, “Prison guard tower,” in response to the new design, with other users corroborating their interpretation of the Blockhouse. But many of the comments once again revolved around city cost and wasted time. 

When asked about Sarantou’s desire to delay the ordinance to hear from the public in a week, both Kapszukiewicz and Mattimoe defended the selection process. 

“These are community-driven efforts. And you know, this isn’t the Arts Commission just dictating what goes on in the city at all,” Mattimoe said. As the director of art in public spaces, Mattimoe said the engagement, 327 responses, was pretty high for what he’s used to hearing from the public concerning public art. 

“To me, that was a big response,” he said. “I don’t know what else we could have done.”

Regardless, not all Toledoans knew about the process in designing their new flag or that their opinions were wanted. 

“I never saw a billboard about it on any major roads,” said Toledoan Hannah Lehmann. “The only reason I heard about it is because people I actually knew who were designing the flags made social media posts about it.”

What’s the cost?

For winning the flag design contest, Yappueying received $3000, while the two other finalists both received $1000. 

“About $5,000 of that does come out of the City of Toledo’s funding,” Mattimoe said. One percent of Toledo’s city budget is allocated towards the arts each year. “We have to go in front of city council every year and present our municipal art plan for the year, and this was part of the plan.

“We get the number once they do their budget,” he said. “This [budget] is 1 percent of capital improvement funds, and this year’s number was at $501,000.” 

In total, the flag redesign cost 1 percent of 1 percent of the capital improvements budget, and it was estimated in 2022 to roughly cost $1,500 to physically replace all the city flags. 

Citizen initiative

Regardless of the adoption of his flag design, the mayor and council member Nick Komives took the city council session and ceremony as an opportunity to thank Parr for initiating the process of redesigning the city of Toledo’s flag.

“Jacob put his heart and soul into something he felt was really good for us,” Komives said.

Kapszukiewicz, in his first moment to introduce the flag, also paid his respects to Parr. “I want to thank firstly Jacob Parr,” he said. “Without him, this conversation about our city flag would never have happened.”

In the flag ordinance, Kapszukiewicz said Parr’s name was placed intentionally into the legislation, “to make sure Jacob’s role was honored.”

The last word

“I’m grateful to the City of Toledo and The Arts Commission for fostering a process that allowed so many voices to shape this vision,” Yappuening said. “I moved back to Toledo at the end of 2019.

“Moving back to Toledo this time had solidified it as a real sense of home, something that I don’t think I personally had felt strong about before,” he added. “Most everyone who lives here genuinely wants to be here .. it just feels simple to be here.” 

“I’m looking forward to seeing this flag fly proudly, representing the unity and strength of Toledo.”