 | |
| Use | Civil and state flag |
|---|---|
| Proportion | 3:5 |
| Adopted | August 14, 2019 |
| Design | An upper lighter blue, a lower dark green, and a bottom darker blue. Two parallel, wavy white lines are between the blues and green; each has three peaks. There is an eight-pointed gold star in the sky blue between the first and second peaks. |
| Designed by | Blane Tetreault |
The flag of Duluth, Minnesota, consists of three main sections: a lighter blue that takes up the upper half, a dark green that takes up a quarter below that, and a darker blue in the bottom quarter. Between the blues and green there are two parallel wavy white lines; each has four valleys and three peaks. There is an eight-pointed gold star in the sky blue above the first and second peaks in the white lines. Portions of the flag symbolize the sky, the north woods, Lake Superior, snowy winter, three hills in Duluth, and the North Star.
An earlier city flag was adopted in 1979, but by 2018 it was rarely used and it did not meet modern flag design principles, especially with the city seal in the center.
In 2016 the city of Duluth adopted a long-range planning vision called "Imagine 2035". One of Imagine 2035's "big ideas" was to update the city flag. There were 195 submissions from 98 artists who participated in an open design competition. In 2019 the flag submitted by Blane Tetreault was chosen as the winner. The flag was approved by the city council in 2019 and 2020, and it was first flown in 2021. In a 2022 North American Vexillological Association (NAVA) survey, the flag received an A grade and was rated in the top 25 of over 300 flags introduced since 2015.