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.