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

  • dontkickducks@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

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

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    20 hours 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
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    23 hours ago

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

  • zeezee@slrpnk.net
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    14 hours ago

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

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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    1 day 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
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      17 hours 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.

    • hddsx@lemmy.caOP
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      14 hours ago

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

    • mienshao@lemm.ee
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      1 day 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
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        21 hours 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
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        1 day 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
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            18 hours ago

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

            • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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              4 hours 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
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          18 hours 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
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            14 hours 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.

  • agent_nycto@lemmy.world
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    19 hours 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.

  • Flax@feddit.uk
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    1 day 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
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      23 hours 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
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        17 hours ago

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

        • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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          15 hours 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. 😅

  • hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • hddsx@lemmy.caOP
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      14 hours ago

      This here boggles my mind. Why would you discriminate against others when you yourself know what discrimination feels like?

      • Pipster@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 hours ago

        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…

    • stinky@redlemmy.com
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      18 hours ago

      This is my take too. I don’t care how appealing the flag looks, but it needs to call out discrimination.

  • Yermaw@lemm.ee
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    1 day 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
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      1 day 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
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        1 day 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
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        1 day 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?

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

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

        • DokPsy@lemmy.world
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          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

      • Asetru@feddit.org
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        1 day ago

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

      • mienshao@lemm.ee
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        1 day 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
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          19 hours 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
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      1 day 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

    • Kaboom@reddthat.com
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      1 day 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

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
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      1 day 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
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        21 hours 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
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          19 hours 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.

    • november@lemmy.vg
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      1 day ago

      deviation from heterosex

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

    • hddsx@lemmy.caOP
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      1 day 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

  • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      20 hours ago

      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.

  • november@lemmy.vg
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    1 day ago

    “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.

    • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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      15 hours ago

      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.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Americans love to subdivide themselves, and that’s especially true for activists. The flag reflects that.

    • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      23 hours ago

      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