I really don’t like the design of the progress pride flag, and I couldn’t really put my finger on it until I saw this: https://nava.org/good-flag-bad-flag
For reference, here is the flag I’m referencing as “bad flag”:
And here is the original:
So, the original has too many colors, but it’s the colors of the rainbow. In order. It’s recognizable from really far away, and it’s dead simple to draw.
With the Intersex flag, that’s 14 colors. There are three shades of “purple”. The circle won’t be visible from far away. The chevrons are too thin to be very recognizable from far away.
It’s not like there aren’t good pride flags. Like there are AMAZING ones:
Edit:
In case you don’t know what these are: https://flagsforgood.com/collections/pride-flags
I’m pretty picky about flags but I like the progress pride flag well enough. not over the moon about it, but I fly it outside my house during June. If you can make a better one, it’s always okay to attempt to do so.
it’s a long time meme that pretty much all LGBT flags are awfully designed. but they also got wide acceptance so it’s hard to redesign. as a designer I’ve looked for redesigns and have not seen anything really. even the ones you’ve shared are brand new to me. where did you find those?
I’m just mad they didn’t add Italians and Jews to the progressive flag, cmon!
What annoys me about takes like this is that it seems to be appealing to some sort of council of gays who are in charge of the flags. Nobody is. There’s no “official” flag. If you don’t like the progress flag or the intersex version of it then just don’t fly them or design your own that you do like. Nobody is stopping you. A ton of the pride flags in use today are just designed by random Tumblr users in the mid '10s. Which is fine, not hating on them, just making sure you know there is nothing stopping you from making one you like or flying the ones you prefer.
This is the very reason I’m surprised. These flags come and go by the winds of memetics; so why is it that this design is somehow able to propagate so well despite being so clearly visually incoherent?
I’m not necessarily complaining, I’m just astonished that it caught on. Like imagine if a really discordant and structureless song became super popular.
I fly the original pride progress flag on my house and I really like it. If it is shocking to you that not everyone agrees with what makes a flag look good look no further than the US’s state flags. They’re a mess. They’re all over the place. People have different tastes. I think the “state seal on blue background” is bad but clearly enough people in those places don’t dislike it enough to change it.
pride flag indeed.
I’m of the option that the original rainbow flag is still the best. It was meant to include everyone under the rainbow so trans people and others are already included.
Was it meant to represent black and indigenous people?
Does it need to?
Not sure why you would ask that. I’m responding to this claim:
It was meant to include everyone under the rainbow so trans people and others are already included.
Ah I get your point. Native and black people are their own sexual identity. Got it.
The progress flag is copyrighted by one Daniel Quasar, and he sporadically exercises his copyright on people who use the sell designs involving the progress flag. Or so I’ve heard. Anyway, for this reason, I avoid using it.
i was sceptical of this claim but it appears you’re dead right
Most people do not know about this flag’s origins. Its creator appropriated Gilbert Baker’s 1978 rainbow flag and the light blue, pink, and white stripes from the 1999 trans pride flag created by Monica Helms (without even a call to her), and the black and brown stripes from the 2017 More Colors More Pride Flag designed in partnership with Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs and then proceeded to LICENSE THE DESIGN FOR PROFIT
https://gaycitynews.com/we-need-walk-away-progress-profit-flag/
rest of the article is interesting too
this just makes it all the more baffling that this graphic-design-is-my-passion gaudy clashing mess of a flag is the one you see everywhere now
That’s wild. I would have retained the copyright too, but for the purpose of suing the fuck out of people who misuse it
Even if that were what he’s doing, I would still avoid using it as I’m a supporter of the public domain on principle. If something is essentially public domain, it should be fully public domain.
That’s not actually the original pride flag. That’s the one with 2 mission stripes that were taken away due to cost. The original had turquoise instead of blue and a pink and indigo stripe, so one color more than the rainbow. Rainbows have red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
The 8 striped also symbolized different things. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_flag_(LGBTQ)
I agree with what you’re saying. As they keep adding more things to the flag, it becomes cluttered and harder to see.
Aside from the design of the flags, scrolling through these ones felt a bit like a colour blind test. Especially the demi-flags.
i just learned last week about the original lesbian flag:
and i gotta say it’s amazing
Fair warning with that one, its really cool looking but mostly popular with trans lesbians and terfs.
as a trans lesbian… ok that tracks.
I’ve seen TERFs use it less, as they’ve started to win the “trans debate” less of a need to disguise their shit as “protecting lesbians”
Rainbow flag is cool. 🏳️🌈
Due the spectral (is that said correctly?) nature of gender identity and sexual preferences individualized representation of every part of an infinite spectrum is, by definition, impossible. Thus a catch them all flag is the best in representing our diversity.
New pride flag
I think it’s basically just “feature creep.” Too many ideas trying to be crammed into one symbol. And what’s annoying, to me, is that the rainbow by itself was already supposed to represent everyone. That’s why it is a rainbow.
KOLANAKI
It’s the same phenomenon as “LGBTQI+”
It was literally LGB at one point. I understand the concept of inclusion but I think pursuing it by appending and appending and appending is a lousy way to go. I believe the “Q” was finally added in part because it was hoped to be some kind of catch-all, but that didn’t work.
We could always use the GRSM acronym (Gender, Romantic, and Sexual Minorities)
I just learned about GSM two days ago here on Lemmy. Now I am learning about GRSM, and while I like both, learning that there is now an additional letter leads me to believe it may go down the same rabbit hole.
Oh shit I unironically like this.
I’m a fan of it but it doesn’t seem widely known. Maybe we should spread the word.
I propose reducing it down to QT
You have reached enlightenment. The universe has no more secrets to you, young one.
You know too much.
CATCH THEM, BOYS !
Maybe we should shorten it to Q++ 😅 (j/k)
I guess I would like to schedule a meting with the project manager and/or customer to discuss the flag specification…
Make sure someone takes minutes so we can maximize our synergies and deliverables.
Why is this upvoted so much? Do you know anything about the Pride flag? Each color represented a particular concept (e.g., sex, sunlight, nature). The colors mean something and weren’t just a catch-all concept to “represent everyone.” Like you’re just saying shit lol. The fact that I see this dumbass discourse EVERY YEAR tells me that maybe it’s not just aesthetics that folks are complaining about, I think some people are removedes and don’t wanna make room. The Progress Pride flag is great and makes clear that it really is for everyone, not just gay men. Get over yourself fr.
The original Pride flag was designed with eight colours, but quickly moved to six and seven stripes because of issues with sourcing dyes and mass production. As others have said, each colour did have a specific meaning like Sex, Life, Harmony, Art, Sunlight. These were aspects of the queer community, but they did not mean specific or narrow identities, and did not only describe ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ people.
In the words of Gilbert Baker (who designed the initial flag) “We needed something beautiful – something from us, and the rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in the sense of our race, our gender, all of those things.” Since then people have added specific colours and extra features to draw attention to identities that they felt were undervalued or overlooked, which is laudable goal, but not because the original did not include everyone.
You’re throwing around a lot of strong negative claims about the discussion here, if you really want to make a case that the meaning of original flag did not include queer people who were black or whatever, please bring some sources. And just to note, personally I actually like the chevrons of the Progress flag, but that doesn’t invalidate people claiming that the original flag included everyone.
Hot pink - Sex
Red - Life
Orange - Healing
Yellow - Sunlight
Green - Nature
Turquoise - Magic/Art
Indigo - Serenity
Violet - SpiritI’m seeing on Wikipedia that the original colors represented stuff like sunlight and life. Who was excluded by these categories?
Nobody. But apparently that means you’re a “dumbass”.
People of color, trans and intersex people, and people who died in the AIDS crisis.
Why do you think they are excluded? Do those concepts not apply to them equally as much as they do to anyone else?
People of color, trans and intersex people, and people who died in the AIDS crisis.
“the Philadelphia Pride flag added black and brown stripes to represent people of color. The Progress Pride flag further incorporated a chevron with black, brown, light blue, pink, and white stripes to represent transgender people and those lost to AIDS. The Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag, designed by Valentino Vecchietti in 2021, added a yellow triangle and purple circle to represent intersex inclusion”
People of color, trans and intersex people, and people who died in the AIDS crisis
Also, people who like the color “Medium Aquamarine” are not represented either
Truly outrageous that we won’t (obviously out of pure hatred) represent everybody with a different color/symbol. After all we’re only ~8 billion people on planet Earth.
A flag with ~8 billion individual lines, all of a unique color.
Might be hard to render on a computer. Most displays can only display around 16 million colors. 😔
Ugly flags & the LGBT+ community, name a more iconic duo. Like, I thought we had designers amongst us, whatever happened to them?
But you see, Graphic Design is their passion!
meh I honestly kind of like it - I especially think the intersex symbol ties it together really well
Why does everyone complain about the progress flag when the poly flag is right there and is terrible? Absolute garbage. Terrible color choices. Barely holds up to heraldic color rules. and Pi? Seriously? Get out of here you fucking nerd. 2/10, workshop it and come back. I hate it.
I’m cool with poly people, this is just the flag equivalent of biting your tongue when eating a burrito.
not to be exclusive but i dislike the contemporary trend of trying to shoehorn polygamy and polyamory into LGBTQ spaces, tbh.
i personally dislike poly, admittedly, but i don’t really think it should be illegal or anything either ig. either way, it’s a lifestyle choice one makes and not an immutable facet of your identity that you’re born with, which i know is an increasingly controversial opinion these days but tbh i don’t think poly people experience oppression or bigotry the same way queer people do and it’s disingenuous to act like they do. it honestly makes me kind of upset to see people so widely positing such a position. i know the inevitable comparison of this rhetoric im using to the rhetoric used against queer people historically but i honestly don’t think that’s a very fair comparison in the case of poly, but that’s a whole can of worms itself.
again, not really an attack on poly people or their right to exist. i know my personal disdain of it probably shines through a bit here in my voice but i don’t want to come off as rude.
downvoted for showing me that flag
Aah bad flag jumpscare
That’s the old secret code one. The new one is listed in this post already
Seen it, is better, not heraldic, still hate the old one so much. Secret my ass everyone knew what that flag meant
Oh yeah that’s so much better
It was poorly designed ever since they added the chevrons. The six colour pride flag was already pushing it with having six colours, but it pulled it off well and made it work. But anything else just screws it up.
Personally, I think adding intersex, transgender, black people(???) makes it seem as if they WEREN’T included in the original. I was always under the impression that the 🏳️🌈 flag included the whole LGBTQ+ groupings
Weirdly , I think the chevron works. But instead of adding all of the extra stripes , I think it would have been better to make the chevron a single color.
Gilbert Baker, before he died, added a lavender stripe to the original flag to for ‘diversity’. I say we blend the chevron with Baker’s vision and have it be a singular lavender color
That said, while I think that would be more aesthetically pleasing, I have come around on the progress pride flag in the same way that I like the flag of Maryland. It’s so busy that it’s circled around from being ugly to charming.
Same here, I don’t understand the need to include ethnicity in a gender and sexuality flag. The flag was fine and already represented diversity. The fuck?
Also very america-centric. Different races are oppressed in different places.
Yeah, very America-centric because here in Mexico we’ve been fine with the former flag. We have arguably less of all the USAmerican-everything the flag stands for. 😅
