The city
flag
A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design empl ...
of
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
, consists of a green field on which is placed a white
four-pointed star (a truncated
hypocycloid
In geometry, a hypocycloid is a special plane curve generated by the trace of a fixed point on a small circle that rolls within a larger circle. As the radius of the larger circle is increased, the hypocycloid becomes more like the cycloid crea ...
) from which radiate blue stripes, each bordered by L-shaped yellow elements. Narrow white
fimbriation
In heraldry and vexillology, fimbriation is the placement of small stripes of contrasting colour around common charges or ordinaries, usually in order for them to stand out from the background, but often simply due to the designer's subjective ...
s separate the blue and yellow elements from each other and from the green background. The official ordinance specifies a height of 3 feet and a length of 5 feet.
Design and history
City ordinance 176874, adopted September 4, 2002, designates the design and its symbolism. Green stands for "the forests and our green City"; yellow for "agriculture and commerce"; blue for "our rivers". Portland straddles the
Willamette River
The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward b ...
near its confluence with the
Columbia River
The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...
. City Ordinance 186794, adopted September 3, 2014, updated the proportions and the
Pantone
Pantone LLC (stylized as PANTONE) is a limited liability company headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, notably graphic ...
color specifications: White, PMS 279 (Blue); PMS 349 (Green); and PMS 1235 (Yellow).
The flag was designed in 1969 by a longtime Portland resident, noted graphic designer R. Douglas Lynch (1913–2009). That version of the flag was adopted in January 1970 and at that time included, over Lynch's objections, a dark blue
canton containing
the city seal in yellow and white; in 2002 Lynch and fellow members of the Portland Flag Association persuaded the
Portland City Council to simplify the design to better reflect his original intent.
The flag's design ranked seventh among the flags of 150 US cities in the
North American Vexillological Association
The North American Vexillological Association (NAVA) is a membership organization devoted to vexillology, the scientific and scholarly study of flags. It was founded in 1967 by American vexillologist Whitney Smith (1940–2016), and others. It ...
's "American City Flag Survey of 2004".
Gallery
File:Flag of Portland, Oregon (1950).gif, (1950)
File:Flag of Portland, Oregon (1958–1970).png, (1958–1970)
File:Flag of Portland (1970-2002).svg, (1970–2002)
File:Flag of Portland, Oregon.svg, (2002–present)
See also
*
Flag of Oregon
The flag of the state of Oregon is a two-sided flag in navy blue and gold with an optional gold fringe. On the front is the escutcheon from the state seal and on the reverse is a gold figure of a beaver, the state animal. Oregon is the only U. ...
*
Seal of Portland, Oregon
The seal of the City of Portland in Oregon was originally adopted in 1878, standardized in 1964, and most recently revised August 3, 2005. According to Portland's city website, "The female figure in the center of the seal represents Commerce, wh ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
City Flag general descriptionan
legal specification(from City Auditor's website)
*
*
99% Invisible
''99% Invisible'' is a radio show and podcast produced and created by Roman Mars that focuses on design. It began as a collaborative project between San Francisco public radio station KALW and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco ...
podcast
Episode 140: Vexillonaire– Tells the story of the 1969 & 2002 Portland flags
website of the Portland Flag Association
{{DEFAULTSORT:Portland, Oregon, Flag of
Flag
A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design empl ...
Flags of cities in Oregon
Flags introduced in 1969
1969 establishments in Oregon