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Eric Hart was scrolling through Instagram late at night when he first saw a post calling for graphic designers to participate in a flag redesign contest for the city of Syracuse. By now, his journey as a designer had taken him thousands of miles away from upstate New York, where he grew up and went to school at Syracuse University, to Tokyo, Japan.

“I remember sketching on my phone that night just with my finger in the Notes app and feeling like ‘if you wake up tomorrow morning, and you look at your sketches, and you read the story about (the contest) again, and you feel as though this is something you want to do then do it. But do it 100%,” Hart said. “I woke up in the morning just wanting to work on it. And I felt like okay, well, this is going to be 100%.”

After 270 distinct versions, Hart’s final flag was voted the winner out of nearly 300 entries submitted to Adapt CNY, the nonprofit group which organized the flag competition. His design, called The First Light Flag, was adopted by the Syracuse Common Council on June 20. For the first time since 1915, a new flag flew over Syracuse.

Looking at the old flag, the Common Council and Adapt CNY found it plain ugly. In a TedTalk from Roman Mars regarding flags, Syracuse’s was used as a prime example of poor design.

According to the North American Vexillological Association, there are five principles a good flag should follow: keep it simple, use meaningful symbolism, use 2 or 3 basic colors, no lettering or seals and be distinctive or be related.

Syracuse’s old flag violated every single one.

Hart wanted his flag to represent all people in the area, particularly those who were not included in the previous design. At the center of First Light, an orange six-pointed star represents the six nations of the Haudenosaunee. The triangles on either side of the star represent the hills sloping west toward Hiawatha Lake and east toward Thornden Park. When combined together, the star above the triangles represents the sunrise over the Onondaga Valley.

“The flag you see today is more of a geographic kind of thing, where it’s hills and valleys … (instead of) a more typical flag. Things like bars and stars, like five-pointed stars,” Hart said. “And that wasn’t really speaking to me. It’s not Syracuse.”

To figure out what he would represent on the flag, Hart would string words and phrases together in search of new directions to take the flag. The exercise eventually became the outline for the flag’s credo, a personal statement of belief, that accompanies the flag.

The credo makes reference to the many nicknames of Syracuse, from Salt City to Central City, while also emphasizing the region’s connection to the Haudenosaunee as well as its key geographic details.

Hart started to develop his process while he was a student at SU, where he graduated with a degree in Communications Design from the School of Visual and Performing Arts in 2010.

In one of his classes, Communication Design Problems, he was tasked with finding and solving issues using their own original work, with the end result being a portfolio of several original designs. Hart credits the class with helping prepare him for the professional world, and he still approaches each design project by asking what problem he is trying to solve, and for which audience.

“Design as a process is pretty much the same no matter what the design, what the problem is that you’re trying to solve. And it tends to be: identify the problem, identify the audience, identify what needs to happen,” Hart said. “That’s what I use throughout my entire career.”

While Hart’s flag was designed with NAVA’s principles in mind, he wanted to ensure that the flag connected with actual Syracuse residents. As an eighth-generation upstate New Yorker, he didn’t have to dig deep into his contacts before finding residents he could rely on.

One of his childhood friends, Kicia Sears, has known Hart since they were both students at Corcoran High School. When First Light was in the early stages of its design process, Hart would send Sears his drafts to get feedback from a trusted Syracusan.

“I know that he was very excited to do something for Syracuse,” Sears said. “He’s lived in New York and Japan and (has) kind of bounced back and forth quite a bit and he doesn’t get up to Syracuse as much as he wants to.”

Another Syracusan Hart reached out to for advice was his mother, April Hart. Admittedly, April Hart did not know much about designing flags at first, however she was still able to provide him with support throughout his creative process. He would consistently send her designs.

“He would explain it and then a couple days later, he’d be sending me another one,” April Hart said. “So he would want my opinion on it and the colors of it and it was really interesting.”

As a public service for the city, Eric Hart registered his flag under Creative Commons Zero, making it free in the public domain. Anyone can use it, reproduce it and create artworks or merchandise with it.

In the coming months after the flag’s adoption, Eric Hart expects his connection to the region to only grow. He announced on Aug. 18 that he is opening a new design studio, Hartbreakers Creative, which will bring him back to live in Syracuse for the first time in years. As he prepares to make his return from Tokyo, he is excited to be returning to a city where he has now left his mark.

The designer said he’d evaluate the success of the flag by how much people in Syracuse embrace it. So far, the reception has been positive.

“Do (people) feel like it’s a banner that they can show pride in the city with, like with a patch on their jacket or with a hat?” Eric Hart said. “And seeing that actually realized was incredible.”

Published on August 28, 2023 at 11:46 pm