He tasked Gilbert Baker with representing the different groups within the community with a single symbol, a banner of peace for everyone to share. What Gilbert came up with was nothing short of revolutionary given its simplicity and elegance. The colors featured in the original pride flag are: The pride flag as created by Baker in 1978 represents love and peace among people in eight different colors. Gilbert's flag was proudly used in the 1978 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade where it was presented to the public. While the pride flag was positively received by everyone in the community, production issues quickly reared their head. At the time, it was difficult to mass-produce pink and turquoise stripes so the flag had to be redesigned. While it would become a seven stripe flag later on and distributed by the Paramount Flag Company, the six stripe variant was created momentarily. The six stripe pride flag featuring red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet is the most common flag representing the LGBTQ community worldwide. Historic fact: The reason why the pride flag has to be impromptu redesigned in the wake of "material deficit" was due to Harvey Milk's untimely passing. The demand for the pride flag grew tremendously shortly after, leading to production issues but also to a wider and more public spotlight than ever before. The idea behind using a rainbow pride flag came from the notion that the community is built of people of various origins, genders, sexualities, and ideologies.
The pride flag, at its core, represents people, people who have gone on too far without a public identity or something to hold on to. In 1994, 25 years after unveiling his initial flag, a new pride flag was designed by Gilbert to celebrate the anniversary of its inception. While the pride flag may seem like a cute decoration to hold on to, it is a symbol of something powerful in the queer culture - a sense of belonging and personal identity. In 2017, Gilbert further reinvented his pride flag design with a nine stripe composition. In it, we see red, orange, yellow, green, and violet being paired with newly introduced or reintroduced lavender, pink, turquoise, and indigo stripes. The artist Gilbert Baker said in his own words that lavender symbolizes diversity in the new version of the pride flag.Īs you can see, there really isn't an established "must" when it comes to rainbow stripes found in pride flags. What matters is the message and its association with the emotional connection it represents for the people of queer culture everywhere around the world. So, what are some of the different interpretations and new flag variations of horizontal stripes found in the pride flag?Īs we've mentioned previously, you really cannot go wrong with how you paint your pride flag. Let's take a look at some of them to see how many different genders, sex, and minority groups we can identify.īut, there are various "official" interpretations of the flag which found their way into the movement and have been used in various pride events and gatherings throughout the years. Think of this as a quick primer into vexillology (which is actually the science of flags!). The Philadelphia pride flag was created by a marketing firm that collaborated with the community for a public event.
Their flag is an eight stripe flag featuring black and brown stripes.