The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
City flag ranks high in national survey
Euclid’s flag ranked in the top 46 of more than 312 flags surveyed by the North American Vexillological Association.
Since 2015, over 300 American cities and towns are known to have adopted new or redesigned flags to represent their communities.
NAVA is an organization with over 1,000 flag enthusiasts, scholars and respondents to rate the designs of each of these flags.
The survey was conducted online from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30 with over 2,800 people participating. All participants were asked to rate the design of each flag using a low-to-high scale of 0 to 10.
Euclid flag rating
The Euclid flag received a rating of A-, putting it in the top 30% of flags surveyed. Over 60% of the flags received a D or an F rating. According to the survey, the ratings given by the public closely matched those of NAVA members.
The flag was originally designed by Harrison McCreight and Evan Botzki in 2017. McCreight is now the president of the Euclid Historical Society and Museum with Botzki serving as the vice president.
The flag is composed of blue, white and gold with a star in the central portion, ending in a swallow tail and tongue shape.
“In its simplest form it felt really good to see this rating. To see the work we put into designing this new symbol for the city paying off is very special,” Botski said. “It feels like we did a really great job in the end. It feels like that was proven here.”
In 2017 McCreight was interning at Euclid’s maythe or’s office when he took up project of designing an official flag for the city. With an interest in vexillology he sought out his friend Botzki and went to work designing the flag.
“I brought my friend Evan into the mix because I knew we had a mutual interest in this kind of project. We started coming up with a bunch of different designs,” McCreight said. “We modeled some of them after the colors that were being pushed for in the master plan and after we got a couple designs we started presenting them to the public.”
He said that they went through a couple of different surveys at the Euclid Public Library and gathered a general opinion before presenting their design to city council.
McCreight and Botzki said that they are thankful the flag was well received and hope to continue contributing to the city.