This really ain't even my problem....

[yvannairie]

...but both the flag with the gray stripe as the second-to-bottom stripe and the one flag based on the Sappho poem are just. Really awful to behold?

The problem with the purple-pink-gray-blue flag is the lack of continuum of colour, having "cool" colours on the top and bottom edges of the design and then a warm-light pink next to an untinted gray that breaks up the visual flow of the design. Also, the way the coloration is set, the overall effect is that the colours go dark-light-dark-light, making the balance of the flag lopsided. This is the most visible when you look at the flag through any colour blindness tool -- or, hell, just putting them in grayscale.

The flag based on the sappho poem has a similar issue of the lack of continuum of colour and brightness. It could fit a broadly triadic colour scheme if the pink was switched to be between the yellow and the purple, but that wouldn't necessarily fix the colour balance issues.

These issues are exacerbated by the limited palettes -- I actually sent an anon to the creator of the purple-pink-gray-blue flag, failing to communicate that an extra white stripe would help balance the design out -- but considering how heavily they lean on what the individual colours signify and less on what the colours communicate as a whole, adding colours wouldn't probably solve the problem either.

Now, the palettes of the flags wouldn't necessarily be a problem -- but the lack of balance in the banded design is. Both of them would work much better if they simily had vertical stripes, or better yet, a design that was ANYTHING BUT HORIZONTAL STRIPES. Hell, the sappho flag would be really nice if it was a pink and purple field with a green circle and a yellow star/flower in the center or something like that, it would clash less and would be more balanced tone-wise out the gates.

In general, the obsession on horizontal stripes in "new" Pride flags annoys me, because it just makes them seem formulaic without drawing on the meaning of the horizontal stripes and the implications of horizontal positioning. It's like the people making these don't know anything about heraldry, they just know colours in Pride flags signify A Thing and the way the colours work off each other doesn't seem to even pass through their heads.

But again: I am not a lesbian. I just have Strong Opinions about visual design.

Comments

[wolffyluna]

Deep agreement about the Sappho inspired flag. (I haven't seen the other one, so can't comment.) Though honestly I feel like the colour palette on the Sappho inspired flag is inherently borked, but the horizontal stripes enhance the borkedness.

[yvannairie]

I mean, not really? Green-yellow-purple is a broadly triadic colour scheme -- for example the New Orleans Mardi Gras flag is green-gold-purple. If you tweaked the individual tones to work better with each other, and maybe rearranged them (or, like I mentioned, used some actual creativity) you could get a functional Sappho flag out of the suggested palette.

Hell, just switching the order to be purple-pink-yellow-green would solve the continuum of colour problem and the balance problem.

I fully accept that it's not my business to tell anyone what Pride flag they should favour, but at least the pink one is competently designed. The rest of them try to have lofty meanings for the individual colours and not realising that the way they group those colours also means things.

[wolffyluna]

True, true. I just had such a dramatic flinch reaction to the original that I couldn't see how it could be made non-clashy.

I'm not a huge fan of the pink one, mostly because I think the desaturated reds and maroons look kinda ugly, but at least it doesn't clash?

[yvannairie]

Yeah, it's competent but boring. And the same can be said for every flag that follows from its design.

[grayestofghosts]

I haven't seen the gray stripe flag but honestly I just went on a rant yesterday about how terrible the pink version of the lesbian flag was. Like just in a basic sense, why would you make something with six different shades of pink if you want it to be reproduced widely? If I was a crafty lesbian and wanted to show off my lesbianness, I would go to the store and look for fabric, or beads, or yarn and whatever, and like... where the hell are you going to find 6 different shades of pink of one type of thing??? It usually doesn't happen. The rainbow flag is at least relatively simple to reproduce. I get what the Sappho poetry flag was trying to accomplish but the flag is just really ugly -- it could have been implemented much better.

Anyway, I'm also really sick of the horizontal stripes for all queer pride flags, though I think part of it is because of the ease of reproduction. Honestly the best non-rainbow pride flag I've seen is the intersex flag. It's simple and beautiful. The labrys lesbian flag is a pretty decent design as well, but nobody likes that one because of its associations, I guess.

[yvannairie]

Heavy agreement. The Sappho flag is on a conceptual level so solid, it absolutely could have worked if there had been even an ounce of fucking concern gone into how it was designed instead of slapping horizontal stripes on top of each other.

Honestly, once upon a time I was totally on board, bringing the labrys flag back and reclaiming it from TERFS (maybe by changing the colours -- maybe have the field be purple and pink) but lately I've been running into trans radfems and I'm so sick of radfems that anything that encourages their existence needs to burn, baby, burb.

Ultimately, the seven-shades-of-pink flag is... like, it's boring, but it's a competent design. It's ha-ha funny to joke about lesbians not having a sense of style, I fully support the idea of lesbians breaking outside of aesthetic norms for their own empowerment, but if you want a new standard to rally your community under, it needs to be designed by someone who knows the first, most basic-ass things about colour theory.

[grayestofghosts]

I mean I guess the pink flag is competent, but like... I guess my priority for a queer flag might be a bit different. Like, I think one of the most important parts of a queer flag design is that it needs to be relatively simple to reproduce. While actual flags might be relatively easy to print, like, The Gays are not a central authority that can maintain a fancy design standard. A lot of us are poor. To be able to make items that are recognizably queer for purposes of pride events and grassroots political efforts is really important, and really THE point of having pride flags. Which is why I find the pink shaded lesbian flag not so great, because so much pink is difficult to reproduce on a grassroots level -- but also why I find the proliferation of all these extremely similar horizontal stripe flags so terrible. I mean I guess it makes people feel good to hang them in their rooms, but if you can't tell the difference between an asexual flag and a non-binary flag, what's the use of having both?

I dunno I'm a boring fuddy duddy, tbh.

[yvannairie]

All of those are good points -- I mean, replicability and broad recognisability are also important in visual design. I should note that my experience with this comes from UI/UX design and web/print design primarily, where such things as leading with colour and colour blocking are important for readability first, aesthetics second.