Seattle's flag, adopted on July 16, 1990, for the Goodwill Games, features a turquoise-and-white field with the municipal logo: a portrait of Chief Seattle framed by two lines, with the words "City of Goodwill" above and "Seattle" below.
The turquoise/blue-green color was chosen to evoke "the color of Puget Sound at dusk" – this inland sea that defines Seattle geographically, economically, spiritually. Seattle is a maritime city, built on hills between Puget Sound to the west and Lake Washington to the east.
The city bears his name – a rare tribute in American colonial history, where Indigenous names were often erased. But it is also a complicated tribute: the Duwamish tribe has never received federal recognition.
Seattle is today the home of Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks. It is the city of grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam), of omnipresent coffee, of constant rain. The flag, designed by architect David Wright, captures this misty, northern, technological identity. Seattle looks toward the Pacific, toward Alaska, toward Asia – not toward the rest of America.