Every year from May to August, millions of people parade across the streets of cities on all continents to show their support for open-minded and LGBT-friendly societies. It is one of the final events of Pride Month, a program of festivals and parades that take place around the globe throughout June and into July, marking the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York and therefore the Gay Rights Liberation movement for LGBT equality was formed.
The Stonewall Riots were a series of voluntary riots on 28 June 1969, which were led by a group of drag queens who fought back the police who raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, that welcomed the LGBT+ community. The first Pride march took place the following year and has spread around the world, encouraging LGBT+ people to live freely and openly.
Here are 9 such designs that advocate for LGBT equality:
1. Skyscrapers and monuments turn rainbow | LGBT Equality
On the occasion of Milan Pride, the Unicredit tower designed by Brazilian architect César Pelli was lit with the colors of the LBGT flag. The light installation was only one of the latest high-rise architectures embracing the rainbow. Other iconic landmark buildings have been Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Empire State Building in NYC, TV Tower in Toronto, Sydney Opera House, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Tel Aviv and San Francisco City Halls, and many more.
2. TYPE WITH PRIDE, a friendly font
Advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather designed a font in the honor of the achievements of the late activist Gilbert Baker who designed the rainbow flag back in 1978. The font uses the rainbow colors of the flag for its colorful graphic language which states: “The rainbow flag has become far more than just a flag, it gives people hope”. Also, the overlapping of the color represents the “open and fluid” nature of the LGBT+ community.
3. New York’s LGBT Memorial in Manhattan | LGBT Equality
In June, artist Anthony Goicolea inaugurated the first official monument to LGBT people, which was commissioned by the State of New York after the incident of the Orlando shooting at the gay bar Pulse in 2016.
The memorial is located in Hudson River Park, Manhattan, which eventually became an important site in New York’s LGBT history and honors the fight for equal rights and remembers all the victims of hate, violence, and intolerance. The monument takes the shape of nine boulders, some divided with glass which acts as a prism and can emit a subtle rainbow throughout.
4. Brands wear the LGBT flag
Many brands support the LGBT movement by launching rainbow-edition products or temporarily updating their logos with rainbow colors. Absolut vodka has been one of the first ones to create a limited-edition bottle designed in collaboration with Gilbert Baker, the San Francisco designer behind the original flag.
More recently, the Swedish liquor launched the Absolut Rainbow Edition featuring brush strokes screen-printed on the glass and with a strong message: “Taking pride in diversity, is what the world needs, now more than ever”.
5. A Space for All at London Festival of Architecture | LGBT Equality
Hawkins/Brown Architects won the London Festival of Architecture‘s competition for a float representing LGBT+ architects in the London Pride parade. The float was called “A Space for All”, featuring a black, pitched-roof structure, contrasted with brightly painted details, which will be animated by architects during the parade.
It gives the idea to combine the dual identities of LGBT+ and being an architect, also making LGBT+ identity more pronounced in construction generally.
6. David Wojnarowicz x Loewe
Loewe recently released a series of limited-edition T-shirts featuring the work of the late David Wojnarowicz, an American artist and activist whose work addressed the political challenges facing the gay community during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson chose four of Wojnarowicz’s works to be printed on cotton crew-neck T-shirts. All proceeds from the sales are being donated to Visual AIDS, a fund dedicated to preserving and promoting HIV-positive artists.
7. Progress Pride Flag redesign by Daniel Quasar
Portland-based graphic designer Daniel Quasar designed this update of Gilbert Baker’s Rainbow Flag, to be even more inclusive and relative where his redesign aims to “shift focus and emphasis to what’s important in our current community climate”.
Quasar added five arrow-shaped lines in a chevron formation to the flag: brown to represent LGBT people of color, black to represent those living and those lost from AIDS, and pink, light blue, and white to represent the transgender community.
8. Transcendence rugs by Joe Doucet
New York-based designer Joe Doucet created this collection of graphic rugs to celebrate America’s transgender community after US President Donald Trump revealed plans to ban transgender individuals from the military.
Created with manufacturer Odabashian, the wool rugs feature vibrant colors and patterns and incorporate traditional rug-making techniques such as hand-tufting, kilim-knotting, and Moroccan knotting. Part of the proceeds from the collection is going to the American Civil Liberties Union, a group fighting to defend individual rights and liberties.
9. Cruising Pavilion | LGBT Equality
Cruising Pavilion designed by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, Rasmus Myrup, Octave Perrault, and Charles Teyssou is a type of Venice Architecture which aimed to highlight how the practice of cruising, i.e., moving through space to find a casual, sometimes anonymous, sexual partner has shaped architecture and design.
Comprising a maze of dark spaces lit with red lamps, its exhibits included artifacts from Berlin’s infamous nightclub Berghain and an IKEA-style flatpack. It also revealed how dating apps like Grindr have created the digital infrastructure for cruising which is a research project led by architect Andrés Jaque.
