No, Milwaukee, Reno didn't steal your flag design because ours is better ;)

Milwaukee newscaster Tom Durian of WTMJ Channel 4 accused Reno of stealing his city's "unofficial" flag last night after the Reno City Council officially adopted a new Reno flag.

Durian took to the streets with printouts of the two and asked people what they thought.

He seemed a little butthurt about the similarities. He called Reno Councilman David Bobzien on air and asked him to pay for the design that we supposedly stole from them.

"(Bobzien) offered me beer and sausage and I said, 'No thanks, we already have enough of that here," Durian said on the nightly news.

Sheesh, cry me the Milwaukee River.

More: Reno City Council officially adopts a city flag for the first time ever

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Reno's official flag designer Tucker Stosic, a 23-year-old art director who grew up in Reno, said he had never seen Milwaukee's flag until Thursday morning, when the controversy hit social media.

Stosic attended Galena High School and the University of Oregon. He works at a design firm in Los Angeles now.

"There is without a doubt similarities between the two flags," he said. "Obviously the big circle in the center. But, when it comes down to it, flag design is about being simplistic. There’s limited ways you can design a flag and make it work well. It’s kind of inevitable that two designs would look the same.”

Flag design is based on five basic colors and a handful of symbols: crosses, chevrons, circles, rectangles, stars and triangles. Ultimately, there are only so many variations that can be made.

Stosic's design incorporates the Sierra Nevada mountains, the desert, the Truckee River, Nevada's silver boom and the Reno Arch star (AKA snowflake) in a position that evokes the Nevada flag.

Milwaukee's unofficial flag is of the sun rising over Lake Michigan with the symbol of three rivers and three cities and gold representing its rich beer brewing industry.

So while they are visually similar, they are actually not the same. Also, mountains are better than dirty lakes, but a beer-filled sky is pretty cool. Let's call it a draw.

“(Our) flag was definitely not inspired by their flag, but we can maybe come together and be proud we have two of the coolest looking flags out there,” Stosic said diplomatically.

If Reno stole Milwaukee's flag, then Mexico stole Italy's flag and plopped an eagle on it, Belgium turned Germany's flag sideways and the American flag is derivative of France's flag with its red, white and blue stripes.

Some people even compared the new Reno flag to the Coat of arms of Slovenia because...it has mountains in it? Sometimes it's hard to see what other people see.

Stosic said he actually hand drew about 60 different designs. Flag designers and flag studiers, called vexillologists, recommend sketching the designs on 1-by-1.5-inch squares to replicate the visual distance between you and a real flag on a pole.

"The one trick I used most predominantly is that any flag design is so simple a 5-year-old can draw it from memory,” he said.

Flags should also be able to be sewn by hand. Two of the other Reno flag finalists included complex drawings of Mt. Rose covered in snow or large sagebrush plants. Neither would be easy to draw from memory or sew and the image would look confusing when flapping in the wind.

Flag design is meant to be symbolic instead of literal and can often take on the meanings people give to it over time. For example, many meanings have been given to the red, white and blue of the American flag, but those colors were chosen because the dyes could hold up to the weather. But today, people say white means freedom or purity and red means spilled blood or boldness.

In total, Stosic submitted 30 designs and two of them made it to the final round of voting.

"I probably spent a month to two months on it," he said. "I started by collecting all this Reno information and how people felt about the city then asking, 'What are ways I can represent parts of history and things people like.' "

On the social media platform Reddit, more than 16,000 people up-voted the flag and more than 500 people commented in a flag sub-reddit.

"Las Vegan here, and I gotta say this flag puts ours to shame. Crisp, clean, and evokes the area well. (Good Game) Reno, you win this round," Typhone58 wrote.

Typhone58 is right. Las Vegas' flag isn't having any fun. It's the Las Vegas city seal slapped on a blue background with a grey diagonal line. It's also not in the public domain, so people need written city council permission to use it.

Reno's flag will be part of the public domain once some final changes are made. It will be unveiled at the May 9 Reno 150th birthday celebration at the Greater Nevada Field.

The final design can be used and repurposed in any way. Kurt Hoge, owner of Reno Type printing company, already wants to build a web page full of memorabilia. Redditors have already posted pictures of T-shirt designs.

Milwaukee's unofficial flag is used similarly and often flown around the city instead of the official one (that pretty much no one likes). They also have a really good website devoted to its symbolism and story that includes an easy download page.

But, it's still not officially adopted by their council and therefore remains the "People's Flag of Milwaukee." Bobzien told Durian that maybe it's time for Milwaukee to make this superior flag official, just like Reno.

Mike Higdon is the city life reporter at the RGJ and has taught flag design at the University of Nevada, Reno's journalism school. He can be found on Instagram @MillennialMike, on Facebook at Mike Higdon, Reno Life and on Twitter @MikeHigdon.