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
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 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.
I’m responding to the claim that everyone on the progress flag is already included on the pride flag. I am not expressing an opinion about whether a flag should or should not represent whatever group of people. Am I wrong that the person I am responding to implied that this?
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.
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees and I don’t think I’ll be engaging with your slippery slope argument ✌️
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!
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.
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
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
meh I honestly kind of like it - I especially think the intersex symbol ties it together really well
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.
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.
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 bitches 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?
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. 😔
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?
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.
Really? I’ve never heard just GSM.
I’ve gone down the rabbit hole and gsm is apparently a common incorrect way to say it. Also a lot of LGBTQ people dislike the term.
Really? Why?
I’m just hearing it for the first time in this thread but my first impression isn’t great. Do you really want a label that brands you as a “minority?” That doesn’t seem like a great first step toward equality.
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.
Maybe we should shorten it to Q++ 😅 (j/k)
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 !
KOLANAKI
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.
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”
Aside from the design of the flags, scrolling through these ones felt a bit like a colour blind test. Especially the demi-flags.
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?
deleted by creator
Organic developments of virtue signalling by corpos, I found.
I think you can display two flags- the normal generic pride one and then whatever subgroup you identify with (trans, lesbian, non binary, etc)
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
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. 😅
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.
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.
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.
