A Portland Oregon friend of mine turned me onto a great storytelling podcast named 99% Invisible by Roman Mars that centers on a unique and interesting way of talking about architecture, design, and technology. Imagine my surprise and delight to see Autodesk has partnered on a new flag design with 99% Invisible for San Francisco which partners civic pride and design. Autodesk and 99% are teaming up to sponsor and facilitate a redesign of the San Francisco flag.

The current flag for the city world renown for its architecture, design, technology and style has a flag that appears to be designed in Windows Paint as a beginning graphics class project…

A beautiful city deserves an equally beautiful designed flag. http://www.sanfranciscoflag.com/

WE BELIEVE WE CAN UNFURL A BETTER FLAG FOR SAN FRANCISCO

Check out Roman’s TED talk about flag design.
Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you’ve never noticed

“Roman Mars is obsessed with flags — and after you watch this talk, you might be, too. These ubiquitous symbols of civic pride are often designed, well, pretty terribly. But they don’t have to be. In this surprising and hilarious talk about vexillology — the study of flags — Mars reveals the five basic principles of flag design and shows why he believes they can be applied to just about anything. “

For those in Portland Oregon and attending TEDx on May 30th (sold out), I hope to meet you there and watch my Autodesk colleague Maurice Conti presenting some thought provoking looks into the future of design and technology.

Maurice Conti

Designer, futurist, and Director of Strategic Innovation, Maurice and his team at Autodesk’s Applied Research Lab work to explore how we shape the future and what will matter most. Besides the future, he’s explored the planet by sailing around the world two or three times