The City of Denver has a lot of neighborhoods. You may be familiar with some of them like Capitol Hill, Wash Park, or Five Points.
One man took it upon himself to create unique flags for each one of them.
"This I really just started as a personal pet project. Kind of a meditative thing just to exercise my creativity on the side when I'm having some free time," said Steven Chester, the creator of the "Flags of Denver" project. "It's kind of a combination of two of my passions - passion about cities, and passion about Denver in particular, but also a passion about graphic design. And I've always had a real interest in flags."
Chester says his interest in flags goes back to his childhood. He says he had a place mat as a kid that had different flag designs all over it and it was one of his favorite things.
Steven combined his interest in flags, with his love for Denver to create Flags of Denver.
The U.S. Census Bureau lists 78 statistical neighborhoods for the Mile High City. Those are the neighborhoods Chester is creating designs for so you won't be seeing RiNo, or LoHi in the group - at least not yet.
Now he isn't just brainstorming a look for these neighborhoods off the top of his head.
Steven is doing his homework.
"The first thing I do is bike there, and bike around the neighborhood to get a sense of the architecture there and the overall feel of the neighborhood," he said.
He added,"I also do some history research. The library has a lot of great resources of history from our neighborhoods, especially historical photos. Just kind of pulling inspiration from wherever I can, just walking or biking through a place, taking pictures, that's kind of my starting point then keep going from there."
Chester says he's gotten a lot of feedback about the project so far. Most of it positive and even some suggestions about flag designs from Denver natives, which he welcomes.
"It takes a while to make one of these flags, every shape, every color has a distinct meaning. They look simple but there is actually a lot thought and time that goes into it," said Chester.
Steven happens to be a city planner for the City of Denver.
He says the city is aware of his project and supports it, but is in no way tied to what he is doing.
"This is something I'm doing for fun, by no means are these the official flags for these neighborhoods," he said. "Who knows, in the future maybe we could actually produce the flags and then sell them. I think that would be pretty cool."
Apparently other people think it would be pretty cool as well, because he's already gotten a few requests from people who want to buy his designs.
