Christian Garcia
Bloom Trail High School
he/him/his
Student Design: The Cone Flower of Cook County
1. How does the flag you designed represent who you are and what you care about?
The flag I have created represents one of my visions for an ideal world. I wanted my flag to reflect Cook County’s resources and its progress towards a brighter future.
2. Why did you decide to join the Flag 2021 competition?
I wanted to join the 2021 flag competition because I thought it would be a great opportunity to allow me to connect with my home. Cook County has many areas I was never able to experience firsthand, and I wanted to learn more about Cook County, I also love to design and edit graphics on my computer in my free time.
3. What did you learn about Cook County that surprised you?
I was surprised by the fact that Cook County’s official flower was the Echinacea, which gave me an interesting challenge as I originally designed my flag around another well known flower native to Cook County, the Allium Triocum, causing changes in the shape of the petals of the flower of the flag.
4. Tell us a short story about your collaboration with your flag mentor/partner(s).
My flag mentor, Daniel Chodrow, was very helpful in providing constructive advice for me to improve the design of my flag, he also helped me ensure that my flag reflected the county as accurately as possible while at the same time maintaining a unique and interesting flag design. As I was designing my flag I knew that I wanted to represent Cook County using a flower, which I see as a metaphor for unity. For this purpose I designed the flower of the flag around the Allium Triocum, a relatively well known flower in Cook County. When I was almost ready to submit my flag design, Mr. Chodrow suggested that I design the flower around Cook County’s official flower, the Echinedea, best known as the Coneflower. In hindsight, the Coneflower proved to be a much better flower for expressing unity within Cook County, as the thirty townships and the city of Chicago were much more equally represented thanks to the size of the petals in comparison to the uterus of the flower, and I have Mr. Chodrow to thank for that.