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

  • RabbitMix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    10 hours ago

    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.

  • pyre@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    16 hours ago

    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?

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    19 hours ago

    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.

  • Hugin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    21 hours ago

    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.

    • JennyLaFae@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 hours ago

      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 ✌️

  • GlendatheGayWitch@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    20 hours ago

    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.

  • dontkickducks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 day ago

    Aside from the design of the flags, scrolling through these ones felt a bit like a colour blind test. Especially the demi-flags.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    121
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      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.

        • ApollosArrow@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          12 hours ago

          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.

        • Owl@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          You have reached enlightenment. The universe has no more secrets to you, young one.

          You know too much.

          CATCH THEM, BOYS !

    • hddsx@lemmy.caOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 days ago

      I guess I would like to schedule a meting with the project manager and/or customer to discuss the flag specification…

      • nomy@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        18 hours ago

        Make sure someone takes minutes so we can maximize our synergies and deliverables.

    • mienshao@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      53
      ·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • Acamon@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        34
        ·
        2 days ago

        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.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        Hot pink - Sex
        Red - Life
        Orange - Healing
        Yellow - Sunlight
        Green - Nature
        Turquoise - Magic/Art
        Indigo - Serenity
        Violet - Spirit

        I’m seeing on Wikipedia that the original colors represented stuff like sunlight and life. Who was excluded by these categories?

          • stinky@redlemmy.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            10
            ·
            2 days ago

            People of color, trans and intersex people, and people who died in the AIDS crisis.

            • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 day ago

              Why do you think they are excluded? Do those concepts not apply to them equally as much as they do to anyone else?

        • stinky@redlemmy.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          7
          ·
          2 days ago

          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”

          • Owl@mander.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            edit-2
            2 days ago

            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.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    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.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    28
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    Ugly flags & the LGBT+ community, name a more iconic duo. Like, I thought we had designers amongst us, whatever happened to them?

  • Flax@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    55
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 days ago

    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

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      2 days ago

      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?

      • Flax@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        2 days ago

        Also very america-centric. Different races are oppressed in different places.

        • Lemminary@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 days ago

          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. 😅

  • zeezee@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    meh I honestly kind of like it - I especially think the intersex symbol ties it together really well

  • agent_nycto@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 hours ago

      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.

  • Yermaw@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    79
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    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.

    • Railison@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      79
      ·
      2 days ago

      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:

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        45
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        this fails to capture the grades of saturation.

        Here is every color in the RGB (#000000-#FFFFFF) color space arranged sequentially on a Hilbert curve (but scaled down to 512x512)

      • cecilkorik@piefed.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        2 days ago

        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?

        • DokPsy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          I was thinking more adding from outside the visible spectrum. So a flag with the entire electromagnetic spectrum from ~10^-20 m to ~10^17 m

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 days ago

          But if you include alphas , you need to be inclusive of betas and sigmas, and other Greek letters still undefined

      • Asetru@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        2 days ago

        Black and white are pretty overrepresented there though. Turning this into a sphere might help?

      • mienshao@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        22
        ·
        2 days ago

        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.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          2 days ago

          Each color had a specific meaning, but none of those meanings were a specific gender or sexuality. The meanings were intentionally tied to concepts, rather than to distinct groups of people. This was so it could encompass everyone. But then dumbasses started trying to claim specific colors as their own, which excluded people. And so then every group suddenly started making their own flags, since they were being excluded by the people claiming one of the colors on the rainbow.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      2 days ago

      Wasn’t the entire idea of the rainbow flag to just say “this includes everyone”, to be inclusive?

      Then people started “well red is this, yellow is that, green is that …” Making the entire thing as exclusive as can be, now requiring a color and or symbol for each and every tiny different identity they were trying to be

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      They all sprung up in that period where flags were trendy. Every little camp had to have one to feel like a singled-out tribe—and, no, this isn’t just kink flags. This meant many would be flag designers overnight.

      The result is there’s some really fugly designs out there in the wild now and the idiots can’t go back. But most people are over flag phase now, so you’re unlikely to ever see this and most others out in the wild.

      Nothing fails more at its job than a pride flag that people have no idea what is. It’s almost irony.

      And is this one ugly? Oh, yes. Enough to turn a person straight.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 days ago

        The solution is inheritance. If you want a more specific flag, inherit from the rainbow, but add an insignia. Now you have a unifying flag that is more meaningful. Also you can skip the complexity of trying to make everyone stand out because the rainbow is all inclusive.

        For example, I also like the pink triangle pirate flag. If you want a gay flag, take the rainbow and add that pirate insignia. Think like the US flag which is also a bunch of stripes but with some star insignia. Now you have one clear insignia on a field of inclusiveness

        • saltesc@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 days ago

          You’re right. Could literally design anything and people that know nothing about any of it could figure it out quickly. But instead, a salad of sex preferences, gender, race, kink, specific US cities, all appearing to be under the Intersex insignia.

          It’s always seemed so bad to me that it’s more likely to be done by an anti-woke troll or someone like Michael Scott discovering Pride Month.

          It’s just offensive. Obviously to the eyes, but also to any group being shoved together within its borders.

    • Kaboom@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      2 days ago

      Imo, the rainbow flag is perfectly inclusive. By focusing on one minority, you make it less diverse and less inclusive.

      Rainbow flag is best

    • november@lemmy.vg
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      2 days ago

      deviation from heterosex

      Totally normal words to say. BTW trans and intersex people can still be straight.

    • hddsx@lemmy.caOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      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