The rainbow flag: a borderless design

‘What the rainbow has given our people is a thing that connects us.’¹Paola Antonelli & Michelle Millar Fisher, ‘MoMA acquires the Rainbow flag’, Inside/Out: A MoMA/MoMA PS1 Blog, www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2015/06/17/moma-acquires-the-rainbow-flag/, accessed 9 Sep. 2019.

– Gilbert Baker, Artist, designer and creator of the rainbow flag

‘The design that Baker conceived has very few peers in the history of LGBTIQ design.’²Andy Campbell, Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, 2019, p. 82.

– Andy Campbell, Author of Queer x Design

‘There is something innocent about the rainbow flag that gets under your skin and above your head. I think that’s why it’s endured.’³Meg Slater, interview with Paola Antonelli, 9 Jan. 2020.

– Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

On 26 June 2015, the rainbow flag was hung in the design galleries on the third floor of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, to celebrate the United States Supreme Court’s decision to legalise same-sex marriage nationwide (below). In a blog post announcing MoMA’s acquisition of a mass-produced version of the flag, Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design, and Michelle Millar Fisher, Curatorial Assistant, described it as one of several ‘universal symbols’ recently collected by the Museum.⁴Paola Antonelli and Michelle Millar Fisher proposed the rainbow flag for acquisition in late 2014. MoMA’s acquisitions committee unanimously approved the proposal on 4 June 2015. When the flag was hung on 26 June 2015, it joined other ‘universal symbols’, like the @ symbol and the recycling symbol, in the collection based exhibition, This is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good (which opened on 14 February 2015). The flag was a late addition to the exhibition, and an immediate response to the US Supreme Court’s verdict on the Obergefell v. Hodges case on same-sex marriage of 26 June 2015. For more information, see: Michelle Millar Fisher, ‘Remembering Gilbert Baker, designer of the Rainbow Flag’, MoMA Stories, stories.moma.org/remembering-gilbert-baker-designer-of-the-rainbow-flag-94ea801be826, accessed 10 Jan. 2020. In the extended label text for the flag, the department’s curators explained that its addition to MoMA’s collection celebrated the ‘accessibility and worldwide adoption of this humble masterpiece of design’.⁵The Museum of Modern Art, ‘Gilbert Baker, Rainbow Flag’, Art and Artists, www.moma.org/collection/works/192373, accessed 1 Dec. 2019. Three years later and more than 16,000 kilometres from Midtown Manhattan, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) also acquired a mass-produced version of the rainbow flag.⁶The National Gallery of Victoria acquired a mass-produced version of Gilbert Baker’s rainbow flag for display in the exhibition MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art (9 June – 8 October 2018). The exhibition, developed and presented in partnership with The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the flag’s inclusion (and subsequent acquisition for the NGV Collection) was inspired by MoMA’s legacy in expanding the scope of collecting and displaying design.

American artist and designer Gilbert Baker (1951–2017) created the rainbow flag in 1978. Despite its modest beginnings, the flag is now widely considered the most prominent symbol of pride for LGBTIQA+ communities and movements.⁷Christine M. Klapeer & Pia Laskar, ‘Transnational ways of belonging and queer ways of being. Exploring transnationalism through the trajectories of the rainbow flag’, Global Studies in Culture and Power, vol. 25, no. 5, 2018, p. 527. Since the 1990s, it has transgressed geographical borders, and emerged as a globalised, celebrated and contested LGBTIQA+ symbol.⁸ibid. p. 524. Moving beyond the protest space for which it was conceived, the flag is now used by a range of political actors, movements and organisations as a marker of support for queer rights. Its acceptance and subsequent commercialisation has led to the production and distribution of rainbow products across the globe. Above all else, the rainbow flag has grown to represent an increasingly diverse LGBTIQA+ community, one that crosses countries and cultural contexts. 

In recent decades, academics and authors working in queer or LGBTIQA+ studies, gender studies and related fields, have explored the social, cultural, political and economic developments associated with the rainbow flag’s rise to global prominence.⁹There are countless social, cultural, political and economic developments that have contributed to the borderless status of the rainbow flag. These include changes relevant to the queer community (the gradual acceptance of an LGBTIQA+ presence within society and the commercialisation of queer culture), as well as much broader, societal shifts (globalisation and the internet). For a discussion of these factors, see: Klapeer & Laskar, pp. 524–4; Erika Alm & Lena Martinsson, ‘The Rainbow Flag as Friction: Transnational, Imagined Communities of Belonging Among Pakistani LGBTQ Activists’, Culture Unbound, vol. 8, no. 3, 2016, pp. 218–39. Beyond a handful of exhibitions, and even fewer publications, the significance of Baker’s design decisions has not been considered.¹⁰The rainbow flag has been included in two exhibitions at major art institutions: This is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good (The Museum of Modern Art, 14 February 2015 – 17 January 2016) and MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art (National Gallery of Victoria, 9 June – 8 October 2018). Following the MoMA exhibition, the rainbow flag remained installed in MoMA’s Agnes Gund Garden Lobby until June 2019, when the museum closed temporarily to reinstall the collection in an expanded building. In 2017, following Baker’s passing, London’s Design Museum acquired one of the original ten flags that Baker made in 1978. The first illustrated history of LGBTIQA+ designs, symbols and graphic art produced in the last fifty years was written by art historian, critic and curator Andy Campbell in 2019 (Queer x Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, 2019). This publication features a section focusing on Baker’s rainbow flag, subsequent designs, and newer Pride flags (pp. 82–7; 214–21). Given that the flag was acquired into the Architecture and Design collections at both MoMA and the NGV, it is only fitting that the connection between the flag’s design and its borderless status be further explored. 

A note on terminology

Before discussing the rainbow flag and its design, I would like to explain the logic behind some of the language used in this essay, namely, LGBTIQA+ and queer. It is impossible to represent diverse groups of people with a single word. One word cannot encompass all sexualities, gender identities and experiences. However, the language used by and in reference to LGBTIQA+ communities has progressed over the past six decades. My use of LGBTIQA+ and queer throughout this essay seeks to represent this progress. Every transition to a more dynamic and empowering term is important. New language represents a form of cognitive liberation and collective identity formation for queer people.¹¹Stephen Engel, ‘Making a Minority: Understanding the Formation of the Gay and Lesbian Movement in the United States’, in Diane Richardson & Steven Seidman (eds), Handbook of Gay and Lesbian Studies, Sage, London, 2002, p. 16. It also signifies increased social, cultural, political and economic visibility.

Although these and other contemporary terms did not exist (or were not used by LGBTIQA+ communities) when the rainbow flag was conceived, the individuals they represent did. So, with the aim of being as inclusive as possible, I use them throughout this essay retrospectively. Originally meaning ‘strange’ and ‘peculiar’, the term ‘queer’ was first used in reference to LGBTIQA+ individuals during the nineteenth-century to label them as deviant. It was not until the 1990s that queer was reclaimed by LGBTIQA+ communities as a statement of pride and power.¹²ibid. The term now represents all diverse, non-heteronormative sexual and gender identities. The acronym LGBTIQA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexual, queer/questioning, asexual and the addition symbol, which encompasses many other identities and subcultures, including pansexual and non-binary), is also frequently cited. It developed from LGB, which emerged in the mid-to-late 1980s to replace the word ‘gay’.¹³ibid. p. 11, 14 & 17. The current acronym has evolved over several decades, to represent a diverse and global collective.

The origin and enduring impact of the rainbow flag

While the rainbow flag may be the most enduring symbol of queer celebration and pride, it was not the first. The 1970s represents one of the most prolific and creative periods in LGBTIQA+ design history. The rainbow flag was one of many symbols to emerge from the Gay Liberation Movement,¹⁴The Gay Liberation movement was a social and political movement involving LGBTIQA+ communities in North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Its beginnings are tied to a series of public protests and uprisings initiated by members of the LGBTIQA+ community in response to discrimination and police brutality, in major US cities throughout the 1950s and 1960s. For more information, see: Engel, pp. 3–12 and Margaret Cruikshank, The Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement (Revolutionary Thought/Radical Movements), Routledge, New York, 1992. which began in the 1960s with the goal of encouraging members of the LGBTIQA+ community to counter extreme social, cultural, political and economic discrimination by being out, visible and proud of their sexuality within the public sphere.

Marches and protests by members of the LGBTIQA+ community during this period were frequent, and considered vital declarations of pride. Both during and after these civic demonstrations, visual symbols such as button badges and t-shirts bearing slogans such as ‘Gay is Good’¹⁵The slogan ‘Gay is Good’ was coined by gay rights activist Frank Kameny, a Federal employee fired from his job at the United States Army Map Service in 1958 for being gay. The slogan became popular during the Gay Liberation Movement, and often appeared on button badges. For more information, see: Campbell, p. 50. and ‘Lavender Menace’,¹⁶The term ‘lavender menace’ was used in a 1969 speech delivered by cofounder and president of the National Organisation for Women (NOW), Betty Friedman. Friedman used the term to describe the perceived threat of lesbianism to the integrity and credibility of NOW and the feminist cause more broadly. In response, writer and activist Rita Mae Brown created lavender t-shirts bearing the term, which were taken up by the broader lesbian community during the Gay Liberation Movement. For more information, see: Campbell, p. 53. or an image of the lambda symbol (λ),¹⁷The use of the lambda as a gay pride symbol was conceived of in 1970 by graphic artist and founding member of the Gay Activists Alliance, Tom Doerr. In the fields of chemistry and physics, lambda signifies ‘a complete exchange of energy’. Doerr believed the symbol could be applied to the LGBTIQA+ community, explaining: ‘in the struggle against oppression a cultural bond develops, suffused with human energies. The lambda now affirms the liberation of all gay people’. Lambda is widely considered the first symbol of gay liberation. For more information, see: Campbell, pp. 44–5. became an important part of the language of LGBTIQA+ rights activism. Wearing motifs associated with the movement, within a culture of oppression, was a form of protest in itself. Sociologist Nathan Joseph described them as ‘subtle cues’ of ‘strategic importance’ because they allow the wearer to not only express their opinion, but also ‘give them greater visibility for all to see’.¹⁸Corinne Gisel, ‘Buttons of pride, badges of courage, pins of protest: a cheap and ubiquitous object proves its might in fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights’, in Basil Rogger, Jonas Voegeli & Ruedi Widmer (eds), Protest: Aesthetics of Resistance, Lars Müller Publishers, Baden, 2018, p. 155.

Joseph’s sentiment about the importance of visibility was mirrored by Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay politician, elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk believed that the city’s LGBTIQA+ citizens deserved a symbol that celebrated their love and the power of the Gay Liberation Movement.¹⁹Gilbert Baker, Rainbow Warrior: My Life in Colour, Chicago Review Press Inc., Chicago, 2019, p. 35. Before the rainbow flag, the inverted pink triangle, conceived of and used by the Nazi party to identify homosexual men during the Holocaust, was still the symbol most prominently linked to the queer community.²⁰During the Holocaust, the pink triangle was used to identify homosexual men in concentration camps who had violated section 175 of German law, to indicate their offence. Women exposed as lesbians were made to wear a black triangle. For more information about the pink triangle, see: Campbell, p. xii. While the triangle was reclaimed as a marker of empowerment and solidarity by LGBTIQA+ organisations and individuals in the early 1970s, Milk argued that a new symbol, one developed from within the community, was needed. At the suggestion of Milk and activist Cleve Jones, Baker designed the rainbow flag, two versions of which were first flown in San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza during the Gay Freedom Day Parade (now known as San Francisco Pride) on 25 June 1978 (below).

The two flags produced for the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade were hand-dyed and stitched, and measured more than nine metres in length. One flag consisted of eight horizontal coloured stripes running across the flag’s length, while the other integrated an additional design element – a blue canton in the top left corner containing circles of tie-dyed stars. The canton was not repeated in any subsequent designs. The coloured stripes on the flags were each assigned an arbitrary meaning by Baker, his friends James McNamara and Lynn Segerblom (then known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow), and the thirty volunteers who assisted them in producing the original flags at San Francisco’s Gay Community Centre:

Hot pink = sex

Red = life

Orange = healing

Yellow = sunlight

Green = nature

Turquoise = magic

Blue = serenity

Violet = spirit²¹Gilbert Baker, ‘Rainbow flag color meanings’, Gilbert Baker Foundation, gilbertbaker.com/rainblow-flag-color-meanings/#., accessed 10 Dec. 2020.

Use of the flag by the city’s LGBTIQA+ community increased in response to Harvey Milk’s assassination on 27 November 1978, after which San Francisco’s Pride Parade Committee officially endorsed the rainbow flag. A combination of increased demand following Milk’s death and a shortage of hot-pink fabric led to the flag’s only manufacturer, Paramount Flag Company, selling the flag without a pink stripe. The following year, Baker worked with the city’s Gay Freedom Day Committee and Paramount to create what he described as a ‘landscape of rainbow flags’ for the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade.²²Baker, p. 57. Four hundred flags were produced and attached to lampposts along Market Street. To ensure no part of the flag was obscured by the post, Baker removed the turquoise stripe.²³Baker, gilbertbaker.com/rainblow-flag-color-meanings/#. The resulting six-striped version is now considered the standard design for the rainbow flag.

More than forty years on, while other pride symbols exist only in archives, films and publications, as relics of the Gay Liberation Movement, the rainbow flag has endured. It is mass-produced and distributed in countries around the world, hung outside of LGBTIQA+ community centres and civic buildings, and features prominently in popular culture. At the end of every episode of the 2019 Netflix reboot of the 1993 television program ‘Tales of the City’, which centres on the lives of queer residents who share a home in San Francisco, a variation of the flag’s design flashes across the screen. On several occasions, Facebook users have been given the opportunity to apply a rainbow filter over their profile picture, indicating that they identify as LGBTIQA+, or are an ally of the queer community. It is remarkable that a symbol originally assembled by a small group of people in the attic of a Gay Community Centre is now embraced as a marker of the diversity of LGBTIQA+ communities across the globe.

Why has the rainbow flag not been superseded or fallen out of popularity? While there are countless social, political, cultural and economic reasons for its rise to fame, the role of Baker’s design logic in the flag’s international dissemination cannot be ignored. Baker wanted to create ‘something that everyone instantly understands’.²⁴Antonelli & Fisher. MoMA’s categorisation of the rainbow flag as a ‘universal symbol’ suggests that Baker was successful. According to Antonelli, designs like Baker’s acquire a ‘universal status’ when they ‘become so ubiquitous that they are enmeshed in people’s lives to the point that they are not singled out any more’.²⁵Antonelli differentiates between universality in design and universal design. Universal design is a term coined by architect and activist Ronald Mace, and refers to the design of ‘products and the built environment to be aesthetic and usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone’. Antonelli looks beyond Mace’s and other academic definitions of universal design, claiming the concept of ‘the universal standard’ embedded in universal design is outdated, because people no longer need to ‘standardise in order to democratise’. Antonelli attributes this change to technological innovations in recent decades: ‘The digital revolution has changed our idea of scale. We don’t think of the multitudes anymore as this indistinct mass of people […]. A good designer thinks of a diverse set of individuals’. Antonelli proposes that we redirect the focus from formal definitions of universal design to the universality of certain designs. For more information, see: Slater, interview with Antonelli. Several of Baker’s seemingly simple, yet incredibly important design decisions have played a crucial role in the rainbow flag’s universality. The rest of this essay will explore three of these decisions: selecting the flag format, using the rainbow symbol, and not trademarking the design.

The flag

‘I thought a gay nation should have a flag too, to proclaim its own idea of power.’²⁶Baker, p. 36.

– Gilbert Baker

Every nation has a set of symbols that is carefully developed and deployed to represent its collective character. One of the most important and widely recognised symbols in this set is the national flag. While flags have uses outside of the nationalist cause, none are as widely recognised or accepted. This is due to the exposure given to national flags. They are flown outside of universities, hotels and embassies; unfurled at commemorative parades; and wrapped around or painted onto the bodies of dedicated fans at sporting events. One of the most significant displays of patriotism through the language of flag design takes place every four years, during the Parade of Nations ceremony at the Olympics. A representative athlete from every competing country marches holding their nation’s flag. Through constant and varied performances like these, national flags have come to be accepted as markers of a nation’s identity.²⁷Karen A. Cerulo, Identity Designs: The Sights and Signs of a Nation, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1995, pp. 11–34.

Baker’s decision to design a flag for the LGBTIQA+ community was inspired by one such performance: The United States Bicentennial celebrations in 1976. Baker has described the emphasis placed on the American flag during this highly televised, historic moment: ‘It was everywhere. On every level, it functioned as a message’.²⁸Baker, p. 36. He was also influenced by its increased presence in popular culture: ‘from Jasper Johns paintings to trashy jeans in the Gap and tchotchkes’.²⁹Antonelli & Fisher. He understood the flag’s primary purpose as a national identifier and applied the same logic to the LGBTIQA+ community, claiming, ‘maybe we could have a flag too, because we’re a people’.³⁰Tami Albin, Under the Rainbow: Oral Histories of Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Intersex and Queer People in Kansas, University of Kansas, kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/6895/Gilbert%20Baker%20Oral%20History.pdf?sequence=3, accessed 1 Aug. 2019.

Baker was also motivated by the revolutionary function of the flag, and their creation throughout history as powerful symbols of resistance during periods of social and political upheaval. He connected the radical origins of the French and American flags to the need for a new symbol to represent the Gay Liberation Movement:

I thought of the original American flag with its thirteen stripes and thirteen stars, the colonies breaking away from England to form the United States. I thought of the vertical red, white, and blue tricolour from the French Revolution, and how both flags owed their beginnings to a riot, a rebellion, or a revolution. […] As a community, both local and international, gay people were in the midst of an upheaval, a battle for equal rights, a shift in status in which we were now demanding power – and taking it. This was our new revolution. […] It deserved a new symbol.³¹Baker, p. 36.

Baker did not agree with every application of the national flag. He criticised and rejected its use as a boundary object. He understood that the LGBTIQA+ community was a global collective, one requiring a flag that could be ‘flown everywhere’.³²ibid. This was made clear by his decision to hang the first two flags outside of San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza. It was through this bold and subversive gesture that Baker was able to send a strong message: ‘We picked the birthplace very carefully […]. That was deliberate – even in those days, my vision and the vision of so many of us was that this was a global struggle and a global human rights issue’.³³Antonelli & Fisher.

Despite the gender and racial inequality that characterised the Gay Liberation Movement, Baker intended for the rainbow flag to represent sexual and gender diversity, acceptance, community, and love – identities and experiences that extend beyond national borders.

The rainbow

‘The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things. Plus, it’s a natural flag – it’s from the sky!’³⁴ibid.

– Gilbert Baker

Baker has recounted the specific event that led to his use of the rainbow as the main graphic element in the flag’s design. The idea first entered his mind while dancing in a queer nightclub in San Francisco, under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs: ‘We rode the mirrored ball on glittering LSD and love power. Dance fused us, magical and cleansing. We were all in a swirl of color and light. It was like a rainbow. A rainbow. That’s the moment when I knew exactly what kind of flag I would make’.³⁵Baker, p. 37.

Beyond his epiphany on the dancefloor, Baker’s use of the distinctive multicoloured pattern was also motivated by the symbol’s long and varied history as a marker of faith, peace and unity. The rainbow has broad genealogies that extend beyond its significance as a natural phenomenon, particularly in mythology, religion and art. In Greco-Roman mythology, it is described as a path between earth and heaven. According to the Book of Genesis (9:13-17), God put a rainbow in the sky after Noah’s flood, as a promise that he would never again flood the earth. Baker has described its biblical significance: ‘In the Book of Genesis, [the rainbow] appeared as proof of a covenant between God and all living creatures’.³⁶ibid. The rainbow also frequently appears throughout art history, from the other-worldly illustrations of William Blake to the sublime landscapes of J. M. W. Turner and John Constable. What unites these seemingly disparate sources is the use of the rainbow to represent the promise of hope and harmony.

Beyond its historical significance, Baker understood the rainbow’s global legibility. Already recognised around the world, it was a symbol capable of representing the diverse collective that he sought to reach. Since Baker’s use of the rainbow in the flag’s design, many of its former mythological, religious and art historical associations have been surpassed by its connection to LGBTIQA+ communities across the globe: ‘We follow the rainbow colours regardless of the shape they appear in, whether as a rainbow on a poster, or on a bracelet […] and treat them as variants of the rainbow flag’.³⁷Alm & Martinsson, p. 222.

Antonelli has also called attention to the importance of the reproducibility and adaptability of the rainbow: ‘It is so easy to repeat, and apply to other formats. All of a sudden, it was as if the gay community had acquired the rainbow’.³⁸Slater, interview with Antonelli. Antonelli’s humorous remarks raise an important point. The ease with which manufacturers are able to replicate Baker’s simple yet distinct design has resulted in the production of not only a seemingly infinite supply of rainbow flags, but everything from rainbow erasers to rainbow zinc.

The public domain

‘I don’t have a patent or a copyright, so all those dollars slid away. But [the rainbow flag] belongs to everybody.’³⁹Albin.

– Gilbert Baker

In the decades following its creation, the rainbow flag was gradually distributed throughout the US, and then rapidly across the globe. Despite its commercial success, Baker refused to trademark the flag’s design, believing it belonged to the people. According to Antonelli, this decision is not one made often or easily by designers: ‘It takes a lot of generosity or idealism to renounce the kind of money that could come from a design that has a trademark’.⁴⁰Slater, interview with Antonelli.

Baker’s decision to leave the rainbow flag to the people may be the most important design decision he made. It has allowed the uses of the design to increase exponentially. From postal stamps ⁴¹In March 2016, the postal service of Sweden and Denmark, PostNord, released rainbow coloured stamps to celebrate LGBTIQA+ pride. This marked the first use of the rainbow flag on a postal stamp. For more information, see: Media, ‘Pride Flag becomes a stamp’, PostNord, www.postnord.com/en/media/press-releases/postnord-sverige/2016/pride-flag-becomes-a-stamp2/, accessed 20 Dec. 2019. to Nike sneakers (below), ⁴²In May 2019, the international sportswear brand Nike announced the release of the ‘BETRUE’ collection of footwear, apparel and accessories, developed in partnership with the Gilbert Baker Estate. The collection was launched to celebrate pride month, and to honour Baker’s life and legacy. This collection is ongoing, with new sneaker and sandal designs integrating the rainbow released in 2021. See: Nike News, ‘Breaking Down Nike’s 2019 ‘BETRUE’ Collection’, Nike, https://news.nike.com/news/nike-2019-betrue-collection, accessed 5 Jan. 2020. the rainbow flag is everywhere, because Baker decided not to limit its use. By not trademarking the design, he also acknowledged that a single symbol is not capable of representing a diverse and ever-evolving community. The gesture has allowed members of the LGBTIQA+ community, including Baker himself, to revisit, critique and reimagine the rainbow flag.

Debates surrounding the rainbow flag among postcolonial scholars reveal its contested status. Many reject the flag, viewing it as a discriminatory object that selectively serves only a privileged minority within LGBTIQA+ communities.⁴³See Klapeer & Laskar, pp. 528-532; Alm & Martinsson, p. 220–3, 236–7; Pia Laskar, Anna Johansson & Diana Mulinari, ‘Decolonising the Rainbow Flag’, Culture Unbound, vol. 8, no. 3, 2016, pp. 209–11.; Rabul Rao, ‘Echoes of Imperialism in LGBT Activism’, in Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Berny Sèbe and Gabrielle Maas (eds), Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies, I.B. Tauris, London, pp. 353–70. This is largely due to the specific context from which the flag emerged. It is a product of the Gay Liberation Movement, which centred in North America, and according to queer activist Marie Robertson, represented ‘the struggle for gay men to achieve approval for the only thing that separates them from the “man”.’⁴⁴Engel, p. 11. Despite Baker’s best intentions, the social, cultural, political and economic context in the 1970s meant that, from the outset, the flag was not inclusive of all LGBTIQA+ identities and subcultures. Although the contemporary LGBTIQA+ movement bears little resemblance to its original form, the flag’s origin story has led to its ongoing categorisation as a racist, sexist and classist symbol by certain critics. Some claim that the flag is still ‘connected to a “moderate” or white LGBTIQ movement’, representing only white gay men and lesbians, and excluding queer people of colour, and transgender, bisexual and other identities and subcultures.⁴⁵Klapeer & Laskar, p. 530.

To better account for these identities and subcultures, variations of Baker’s original design have emerged. In 2017, Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs commissioned the production of a version of the flag incorporating a black and brown stripe to represent the city’s LGBTIQA+ people of colour.⁴⁶Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs added the black and brown stripes to the rainbow flag as a part of the city’s ‘More Colour More Pride’ campaign. Amber Hikes, the Office’s Executive Director, commented on the importance of the revision to the flag’s design: ‘It’s a push for people to start listening to people of color in our community, start hearing what they’re saying, and really to believe them and to step up and say, “What can I do to help eradicate these issues in our community?” ’. See: Ernest Owens, ‘Philly’s Pride Flag to Get Two New Stripes: Black and Brown’, Philadelphia News, www.phillymag.com/news/2017/06/08/philly-pride-flag-black-brown/, accessed 5 Jun. 2019. The same year, Baker returned to the flag’s original design, and added a ninth, lavender stripe to represent the diversity within the queer community.⁴⁷Campbell, p. 83. In 2018, graphic designer Daniel Quasar conceived of a version with a chevron at the flag’s hoist, consisting of white, light pink, light blue, brown and black stripes, to more prominently represent the LGBTIQA+ community’s most marginalised members – people who identify as transgender, people of colour and those living with or lost to AIDS (below). Quasar intentionally made a clear visual distinction between Baker’s original design and his additions to ‘shift the focus and emphasis to what is important in our current community climate’.⁴⁸Natashah Hitti, ‘Daniel Quasar redesigns LGBT Rainbow Flag to be more inclusive’, dezeen, www.dezeen.com/2018/06/12/daniel-quasar-lgbt-rainbow-flag-inclusive/, accessed 2 Jan. 2020. In 2021, designer Valentino Vecchietti built upon Quasar’s design to include and acknowledge intersex people. Vecchietti worked with Intersex Equality Rights UK to conceive of a design that embeds the intersex flag’s design – an expanse of yellow with a purple circle at the centre – within the chevron of white, light pink, light blue, brown and black.

Not all LGBTIQA+ Pride flags maintain the rainbow schema. Many of the subcultures encompassed by the umbrella acronym have looked beyond Baker’s design to develop new flags, which consist of entirely different colours and forms. The transgender flag, designed in 1999 by transgender woman, activist and author Monica Helms, has become an important and now widely recognised symbol for members of the LGBTIQA+ community who identify as transgender (below). Helms has explained the logic behind the light blue, light pink and white stripes that structure the flag: ‘The light blue is the traditional color for baby boys, pink is for girls, and the white in the middle is for those who are transitioning, those who feel they have a neutral gender or no gender, and those who are intersexed’.⁴⁹Ariel Sobel, ‘The Complete Guide to Queer Pride Flags’, Pride Publishing Inc., www.pride.com/pride/2018/6/13/complete-guide-queer-pride-flags-0#media-gallery-media-7, accessed 7 Jan. 2020. Other Pride flags developed in recent decades include the pansexual flag, intersex flag, bisexual flag, asexual flag and non-binary flag.

Acknowledging and expanding on Baker’s use of the rainbow and the flag format, these new flags recognise that the heterogeneity of the world’s queer community cannot be captured by a single design. Their connection to Baker’s design has been considered by Helms, who uses the metaphor of a nation (the LGBTIQA+ community) and its states (the many identities and subcultures within the LGBTIQA+ community), to explain the relationship between the rainbow flag and the flags that have followed.⁵⁰Campbell, p. 215. Art historian, critic and curator Andy Campbell, claims that each new flag adds to a powerful design legacy: ‘One doesn’t necessarily invalidate the other – rather, each of the many flags […] has been crafted with particular audiences in mind. Each has its own history; follows its own design logic; and has a particular relationship with the community it intends to represent’.⁵¹ibid.

The development of these new flags highlights the enduring impact of Baker’s rainbow flag on LGBTIQA+ individuals and communities across the globe. The flag’s existence in the public domain has transformed it into a free and borderless symbol, capable of growing and adapting with the group of people Baker sought to empower and make visible. According to academics Christine Klapeer and Pia Laskar, it is the ‘conflicting and contested usages that has formed the rainbow flag into the most prominent global symbol associated with LGBTIQ communities’.⁵²Klapeer & Laskar, p. 528. Had Baker decided to profit from his design, these important conversations, revisions and new symbols may not have occurred.

Leaving the rainbow flag to the people also allows it to be commemorated in unique ways. Art institutions such as MoMA and the NGV are able to make the symbolic gesture of acquiring something that cannot be legally acquired, not in an attempt to own it, but rather, to pay homage to the enduring legacy of its design and the genius of its maker. This is no small act. According to Antonelli:

When you acquire something in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, it is anointed by the curators, and all of a sudden becomes a paragon. […] The collection then becomes a tool, a weapon, capable of making change happen.⁵³Slater, interview with Antonelli.

When trusted institutions like MoMA acquire and exhibit the rainbow flag, a clear statement is being made: the story of this exemplary design is one that must be shared with the public. The rainbow flag’s design entering public collections, being applied to a range of materials, and debated and altered, aligns with Baker’s chief aim to create a symbol that ‘belongs to everybody’.⁵⁴ Antonelli & Fisher.

* * *

‘I hoped it would be a great symbol but it has transcended all of that – and within short order – because it became so much bigger than me.’⁵⁵ibid.

– Gilbert Baker

The impact of Gilbert Baker’s rainbow flag within and beyond queer communities is varied and immeasurable. Its design is ubiquitous. The flag has become an internationally recognised symbol of pride for LGBTIQA+ individuals, groups and movements. In line with his original aim to create a flag that could be ‘flown everywhere’,⁵⁶Baker, p. 36. Baker succeeded in creating a borderless icon for a global community. As this essay has revealed, Baker’s early design decisions have played an important, yet largely overlooked role in the flag’s international dissemination.

Although they may seem straightforward, Baker’s choices as a designer have had a profound impact on how the rainbow flag is manufactured, distributed and interpreted across the globe. Baker’s decision to unite two simple, adaptable and universally recognised symbols – the flag and the rainbow – resulted in the creation of a design capable of representing a global community. A third decision, not to trademark the design, is arguably his most important. By allowing the flag to exist in the public domain, Baker transformed it into a floating signifier that belongs to the LGBTIQA+ community. This in turn, has resulted in the flag’s design being celebrated, contested, revised and appropriated by the queer individuals and groups across the globe who Baker sought to reach.

Baker’s legacy as a designer also lives on in the many Pride flags that have been created since the first two rainbow flags were unfurled in 1978. Art historian, critic and curator Andy Campbell predicts that this response from LGBTIQA+ individuals and groups is one that will continue well into the future:

In the coming years we should expect more, not fewer, flags, as they are ultimately evidence that we are continuing to find one another, to hone, define, and value our experiences within the long arc of LGBTQ history, imagining collective and individual futures.⁵⁷Campbell, p. 215.

Extending Campbell’s prediction, perhaps in years to come we will see more art galleries broadening the scope of their collections to acquire seemingly ubiquitous symbols that nonetheless represent significant developments in both design culture and in a community’s self-definition and representation. To understand the enduring impact of these design milestones, their creators and stories must be shared, discussed and celebrated. Design, after all, ‘has the potential to transform revolutions, and push the world forward’.⁵⁸MoMA Live, ‘Is This for Everyone? Design and the Common Good’, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boXJNJr2FUU, accessed 11 Nov. 2019.

Meg Slater is Curator, International Exhibitions Projects, National Gallery of Victoria

I would like to sincerely thank Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, for her insights offered on collecting design in the twenty-first century, understanding the role of universal symbols in design, and MoMA’s acquisition and display of the rainbow flag.

Notes