In 2012 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture for an exhibition he curated with Urban Think Tank. He has been the director of Strelka Press, the design critic of The Guardian, and the editor of Icon magazine. He is the chief curator at the Design Museum and the head of Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven. Justin McGuirk is a writer and curator based in London. For more on Californian design, order a copy of California: Designing Freedom here Since then his flag has taken on a life of its own, and while some might see it as a slightly cheesy symbol today, many in less tolerant parts of the world still use and value Baker’s when demanding their own freedom and equal treatment. “I wanted to make it at the center, with my friends - it needed to have a real connection to nature and community.”
Original gay flag design full#
“We took over the top-floor attic gallery and we had huge trash cans full of water and mixed natural dye with salt and used thousands of yards of cotton,” he recalls. We needed something beautiful, something from us.”īaker created the first flag with his friends during the summer of 1978 at the San Francisco Gay Community Enter on Grove Street. It came from such a horrible place of murder and holocaust and Hitler. “Up until that time we had the pink triangle from the Nazis,” Baker explained. Visually, Baker also drew from US flag’s stripes, yet symbolically he understood the importance of a banner created by a community, and in defiance of labels created by its oppressors. The design is inspired by Baker’s admiration for the universality of the rainbow as a ‘natural flag in the sky’.” “For the 1978 San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Parade, Gilbert Baker hand dyes and stitches the first rainbow pride flag. “Despite its proximity to Silicon Valley, San Francisco’s most influential piece of activist design is decidedly low tech,” we explain in our new book, California: Designing Freedom. Rather than mourn his death, many took the opportunity to celebrate his work, and the way in which his simple, creation was championed and adopted across the globe.
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The US artist and activist Gilbert Baker, credited with creating the multicoloured flag, died in New York on 31 March 2017, at the age of 65. However, this year that flag’s creator will be unable to join in the celebrations. Towards the end of this month, in London, New York and elsewhere, rainbow flags will fly in the street in honour of the city’s Pride celebrations. This LGBT Pride Month we remember Gilbert Baker, the creator of one of California’s most potent protest symbols As reproduced in California: Designing Freedom Looking back at the Pride Flag Gilbert Baker, original eight-stripe Gay Pride flag, 1978.