Artist Steven Frost finds hands-on ways to teach students about design principals. In his undergraduate course, Designing Alternative Media Platforms, the Media Studies insructor assigned students to create new flags for the city of Boulder, Colorado. The flags needed to be simple, yet memorable and immediately recognizable. Below are several examples of the flags, designed primarily in Illustrator, with explanations from the students who created them. 

I have the three red lines to symbolize the three red flatirons. I have the ponderosa tree in the center because that’s a pretty important and threatened tree species that Boulder has a lot of.  The white background represents how I see Boulder as a very pure, very beautiful place."

—Sarah Bustamante

The three triangles are the Flatirons. The blue is for the blue skies that we have in Colorado, yellow is for the sun, green is for the open space and the outdoorsy culture that we have here.”

—Sarah Farley

I really like the way the Boulder Bandshell looks at night—the one on Canyon and Broadway—when it’s all neon and lit up. I wanted to incorporate that with the colors of the sun, and then just kind of an evergreen tree with a blue sky. A simple, flat, illustration.”

—Max Hofert