Encycloflaggia
The Online Pride Flag Database
Encycloflaggia is a public research archive and online database of Queer/2SLGBTQ+ pride flags and their design genealogies, tracing how designs emerge, circulate, endure or become disputed, disappear, are redesigned, and return. I built it from the belief that pride flags are understudied as living cultural organisms. Through their re-invention, communities define themselves, take up space, and design better futures.
I wanted this project to resist the narrative that new additions to and expansions of pride flags are excessive, overly specific, or redundant. In fact, the expansive nature of this extended family of symbols is a powerful resource. Through progressions of color and shape, we can read broader social and cultural shifts. Pride flags are intimate public art, which we carry, wear, and congregate under, whether or not we recognize them as such.
The digital information age has fertilized a proliferation of novel and niche pride flags. Some community-generated wikis catalog thousands. But even the most inclusive current sources flatten our precious histories, ignoring the intergenerational current moving through these designs.
Encycloflaggia is committed to transparency, fair representation, and citational integrity. This project is not neutral, and is responsible for what belongs here and what is qualified as a pride flag. That includes distinguishing pride flags from harmful flag-forms that borrow the visual language of pride without serving life & liberation.
Errors are possible. Corrections are welcome. Contributions are sought-after.
Read more about Inclusion & Exclusion metrics, Tooling, and Research Methodology in the Frequently Asked Questions.