Skokie officials choose new flag to fly

After reviewing more than 70 submissions and three finalists, the Village of Skokie is poised to fly a brand new design on its flagpoles.

The Village Board voted last week to advance approval for the “Skokie Spirit,” a flag designed by resident Buddy Boor. Trustees are set to lend the design — a yellow and orange rendition of a flame on a green backdrop — final approval at their next Village Board meeting on Tuesdya, May 4. 

The image will replace the current design, which has represented Skokie for decades and features an arrowhead and the profile of a Native American wearing a feathered war bonnet. 

The redesigned flag will be added to at least eight different locations across the village, like inside the Village Board’s council chambers, outside the Skokie Police Department, and in the flag display at the Skokie North Shore Sculpture Park. 

Boor, a professional designer with 14 years of experience, said he decided to enter the flag design contest after he and his family moved to the village in 2024. 

“I’m really, really humbled,” Boor said. “We picked Skokie to raise our family and since we’ve gotten here everyone has just been so warm and so welcoming, and just the fact that I get to play a small part in contributing to community fabric, I couldn’t be more honored.”

Seeking to respect Skokie’s history and heritage, Boor said his early sketches for the new flag included symbols of the marsh, like cat tails. 

But Boor said he kept returning to the stained-glass “Skokie Spirit” art piece that Joe Folise, a longtime village employee and local artist, created for Village Hall in the late 1970s. 

As a result, Boor’s original design featured many more lines, fragments and colors. 

But after receiving feedback from the Skokie commission and members of the North American Vexillological Association — who emphasized simplistic design, using just two or three basic colors and avoiding lettering — Boor refined his submission to make it “cleaner,” he said. 

The challenge was exciting, he said, especially since municipalities across the country have been in a kind of “flag renaissance” with redesigning their banners in recent years, Boor said. 

“It’s really a medium that’s meant to be seen both from a distance and moving, so it requires a level of simplicity that is just not required in a lot of print materials, especially in the interactive world, so something that needs to be so pared back definitely piqued my interest,” Boor said. 

After the village put out an open call for submissions last fall, they obtained 79 flag designs from Skokie residents. A panel of village staff, artists, graphic designers and art educators then picked three finalists for “further consideration and refinement,” a village webpage shows. 

“Extensive community input, expert consultation, and alignment with established flag design principles,” led the public and the majority of the panel to favor Boor’s submission, and for village staff to recommend its adoption, according to village documents. 

The other top two contenders for the new flag were the “Prairie Flame” by Jasmine Dela Luna and Jeffrey Meyer, and the “Skokie Spirit” by Richa Cordero. 

The move to replace Skokie’s existing flag came after the village approved a new design in March 2025 to replace its seal, one that had been in use since the 1940s and featured Native imagery. 

Many people “including Native community members, felt the design did not represent them respectfully,” a village website says. 

The flame featured in both Skokie’s new flag and seal references the Potawatomi, known as “Keepers of the Fire,” whose word for “marsh” gives Skokie its name, a village memo says. 

“The flame serves as a beacon for all people, regardless of color, creed, culture or background, reflecting Skokie’s longstanding commitment to welcoming everyone and symbolizing the community’s strength found in unity,” the memo states.

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