The new flag for Salt Lake City is finally unveiled

SALT LAKE CITY—  The Salt Lake Flag Committee has settled on a design they like.  And pending approval from the City Council, it will become the new flag on October 6th.

The Mayor’s Office emailed pictures and descriptions out yesterday.  The new flag will be horizontal bands of sky blue and white, blue on top, with a “golden-yellow sego lily” in the left-hand corner.  The Mayor’s Office says “the blue and white backdrop – could symbolize snow, the sky, the Great Salt Lake, and salt.  And the Sego Lily, a flower indigenous to the area, symbolizes resilience.”

The new flag is actually a combination of two design submissions.  (They got over 600 entries from the contest that ended in June.) 

Salt Lake local Ella Kennedy-Yoon is 17 and a senior from West High School.  Her original design is below, with the Sego Lily in a dark blue triangle, flanked by triangles of lighter blue. 

Arianna Meinking is 18 years old, who recently graduated from West High, as well.  She plans to attend Harvey Mudd College in California.   Her design has the blue and white bands with a stylized honeybee over a golden honeycomb in the center.

The Flag Committee used the “principles of good flag design” to narrow the contestants down to 8 for the public to vote on.  “Those principles are: Keep It Simple, Use Meaningful Symbolism, Use 2-3 Basic Colors, No Lettering or Seals, and Be Distinctive or Be Related,” says the Mayor’s Office. 

After getting the public’s input, the Committee whittled the designs to Meinking’s and Kennedy-Yoon’s.  They thought the Sego Lily would pair best with the blue and white backdrop.  

 Mayor Mendenhall is confident in the new flag. 

“We’re in a once-in-a-generation moment of change,” she says. “There’s no more perfect time for our City to unite under a new symbol that personifies and unites us all. I believe this is the design that can take us forward, together.”