Why is the progress pride flag so poorly designed (especially the intersex progress pride flag)? Will it be redesigned?
Why is the progress pride flag so poorly designed (especially the intersex progress pride flag)? Will it be redesigned?
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 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.
The Progress flag stands for the progress that has been made and the progress that STILL NEEDS TO BE MADE against racism and transphobia as well as memorializing those we lost to AIDS.
So yes, while the original flag is meant to include all the LGBT+ communities, progress stands for more than inclusion for a lot of us ✌️
My problems with the progress flag and the trans rainbow flag are not with the groups or ideas they are ment to express.
First like OP I think they are bad flag designs. To busy and lack the simple design a flag should have. I also just don't like the look.
Second there is value in a consistent recognizable design like the rainbow. I spot all sorts of variants and often don't know what they are supposed to mean.
I also don't think there should be spefic meaning to the parts. Saying this color stripe is this group and that color is another group is problematic.
The rainbow colors were meant to symbolize broad inclusion. Everybody under the rainbow. Red isn't gay, blue isn't lesbian, etc. (I know some have tried to add that after the fact).
When you start adding spefic groups to the flag you start having included groups and excluded groups. So as much as I support trans rights and think they belong in the community I don't want any spefic group in the flag.
You then get groups that are not included and want a new flag to included them. Like we are seeing with the trans flag causing groups to want the progress flag. Pretty soon the rainbow is going to look like nascar with logos everywhere.
A simple consistent flag with the message of broad inclusion is better.
Was it meant to represent black and indigenous people?
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.
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 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
The progress flag is copyrighted by one Daniel Quasar, and he sporadically exercises his copyright on people who use or sell designs involving the progress flag. Or so I've heard. Anyway, for this reason, I avoid using it.
The primary reason it's copyrighted is to prevent corporations from profiting off of it.
and..?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Aah bad flag jumpscare
Aside from the design of the flags, scrolling through these ones felt a bit like a colour blind test. Especially the demi-flags.
meh I honestly kind of like it - I especially think the intersex symbol ties it together really well
Thats way too busy. Should definitely just keep the rainbow flag. Not every little niche needs specific representation, just have the rainbow as a catchall for any kind of deviation from heterosex
Edit to add : if they want to use them to identify and specify within rallies or amongst themselves somehow then whatever, go for it, as long as we can accept the layman isnt gonna have a clue and cant really be expected to.
I thought the rainbow was supposed to mean it encompassed everyone.
The colours on the flag apparently weren’t sufficiently inclusive so perhaps this should be the next flag:
But that doesn't include infrared or ultraviolet 🤣
I would absolutely and unironically fly this flag, although to be even more inclusive it also needs an alpha layer. Perhaps it should be a cube? Actually even that might not be inclusive enough, we need more dimensions. BRB I need to figure out how to attach a tesseract to my flagpole, I guess I'll need some kind of gordian knot?
Black and white are pretty overrepresented there though. Turning this into a sphere might help?
God this website is just like reddit. Dumbasses just saying shit. No, the original Pride flag had 8 colors, and each color had a specific meaning. It wasn’t just “to encompass everyone.” Like what the hell, lemmy? Why are we doing bogus discourse on here too? Every year I gotta deal with a bunch of fucking straights dumping on the Progress Pride flag—seriously go fuck yourselves.
I literally lol'd!
I call Lime Green as my personal inclusion color!!!!
Here's the thing though, I know this is an ally flag, but it's like they never considered symbols:
Ignore the really bad black and white background for a second.
Imagine the left side of the shape is an homage to the original pride flag and the right side is WHATEVER YOU WANT TO PUT IN IT. Uniform clean design with representation. Easy to draw for the layman (fill both sides in with rainbow if you want), and easy to add specific representation
You are judging work by somebody who doesn't feel compelled to follow guidelines made by other people with those very same guidelines. Those other people looked much more closely at flags for geographical entities, not movements, to come up with their guidelines. No one is required to follow them or retroactively abide by them. They are a great style guide but not the law.
Every flag serves a purpose. This flag's purpose is to show representation by color and design for everyone in the community. It's was the point to be busy.
Why don't they just stick with the rainbow flag? Because the idea of the rainbow encompassing everyone was made at a time when gay and lesbians came out with pride but many of the letters that abbreviate that community today were still marginalized more harshly, maybe even within homosexual circles. They weren't all suddenly anthropists and free from discriminatory points of view. Development of ideas and communities takes time. And that's why an artist took ideas from many different flags that were created over time and combined them into one. It is eye catchy and instantly recognizable, even at a medium distance still.
I don't find the result aesthetically pleasing either. But I recognize a) that wasn't the point of it and b) I'm not a member of the LGBTQ+ community. If from within that community a movement rises to change the flag into something else, by all means. Other than that my design opinions - and I suspect many other ones in this thread - are largely academic and frankly irrelevant.
Good flag bad flag is not the gospel. Take it as a starting point for new designs but don't scrutinize all existing flags by it.
You really nailed how a lot of trans and poc queer people feel about the Rainbow flag; it mostly represents cis white well off gay men and lesbian women, and implies everybody else.
"Good Flag Bad Flag" is a bunch of people's opinions. It's not any kind of official flag rule book, because there is no such thing.
I think the progress pride flag is fine.
Only to a degree. Good flags are simple, distinct, memorable, easy to recognise from a distance, easy to recreate.
There are plenty of objectively bad flags out there that fail in their design, yet people still like them, and that is fine.
Americans love to subdivide themselves, and that's especially true for activists. The flag reflects that.
garbage opinion, you're the kinda person that'd take issue with Black Lives Matter because you assume that implies white lives are inferior.
also, the progress flag is flown worldwide at Pride so you're just spreading misinformation
Thank you for your opinion. I hope you have a pleasant day.
Oh god please no
OHIO!!
Haha I came here to link this. One of my favorite videos.
O-Hi-No!!
Its purpose isn't to be aesthetically pleasing. Trans people and POC are constantly discriminated against by other queers, and intersex people rarely are even acknowledged to exist at all, let alone treated as anything else than disgusting or sex object.
This here boggles my mind. Why would you discriminate against others when you yourself know what discrimination feels like?
Some think they can curry favour by thowing the bigots a bone. The 'LGB drop the T' group can fly under a radar for a bit by piling in on the most hated upon group but don't seem to realise that they will be squarely back in their sights once the job is done...
Strange is the world of bigotry.
I doubt it'll ever be redesigned.
The reason it's badly designed as is, is that people wanted specific inclusion into the primary symbol. There's really no way to change a rainbow; it's the standard spectrum of visible light being used as a symbol of everyone in their diversity being part of a group.
To be any more inclusive, you have to put things on top of the already inclusive rainbow. A corner piece or an inset is the only way to do that that isn't horrible looking no matter what it is.
The chevrons from the side are at least visually balanced, though not well chosen colorwise. Then again, the representative colors weren't chosen with being added to a flag in the first place.
Once you start changing an established symbol rather than just coming up with a new one, design goes out the window. It's no longer cohesive because it can't be. It's like the difference between someone planning a tattoo that covers their arm, and someone getting a few dozen tattoos on their arm. Shoving things together without a plan ahead of time is airways going to be less visually pleasing.
But, visual pleasance isn't what the flag is for, so maybe it's more effective than something planned from the beginning. I dunno, but the fact that it isn't "just" a rainbow does mean you can't mistake it for someone liking rainbows in general, so that could be a benefit of that change.
I don't agree that the original rainbow flag has too many colors though. If you don't have the standard color spectrum there, it isn't a rainbow to most people's minds, so it would be worse design. The standard ROYGBV is standard for a pigment rainbow for a good reason.
I'm not advocating for removing the rainbow. You could literally "cut" a big rectangle in the middle and just have a different color background with extra things, paying homage to the original rainbow flag and having center balance. The only good thing I have to say about the chevrons are that it establishes vertical and horizontal orientation.
I'll have to mull over your statement about being more effective that something planned from the beginning.
Flags are stupid in the first place though. All flags, it's nothing to do with these specifically.
Agreed.
Though I do think that if progressive-minded people were more apt to fly the American flag at protests, it would be harder to criticize them.
good thing the flag doesn't exist for outsiders to opine about, eh?
