Four variations were sewing machine-constructed and Byrnes won approval to display the four 3-by-5-foot (0.9 m × 1.5 m) prototype flags at the Chesapeake Bay 'Bears of Summer' events in July 1995.
To do this, he received help from another influential member of the bear cultural community. He thought it might be fitting to design a flag that would best represent the bear community and include it with the results of his research. Byrnes' undergraduate degree in psychology involved designing a senior project about the bear culture that has exploded since the early 1980s, of which he had first-hand experience. Craig Byrnes created the bear flag in 1995.
