HRC Equality flag

Used on: Human Rights Campaign (HRC)

Designer: Stone Yamashita, San Francisco. No individual designer is credited · 1995

The logo of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ political advocacy organisation in the United States. A yellow equals sign on a blue field, meaning exactly what it looks like: equality. HRC was founded in 1980 as the Human Rights Campaign Fund. In 1995, under executive director Elizabeth Birch, it rebranded to signal a wider mission and commissioned the San Francisco firm Stone Yamashita, which produced ten candidate marks. Focus groups preferred a different option; Birch's committee insisted on this one for its bluntness. No individual designer is named in any source. On 25 March 2013, the day before Supreme Court oral arguments in the Proposition 8 and DOMA cases, HRC posted a red version of the logo and asked supporters to use it as a profile picture. It was shared over 100,000 times and drove a 600% traffic increase to hrc.org. HRC said red was chosen because it is the colour of love. The colour values here come from HRC's own Logo Standards guide dated March 2012. No more recent published brand guide was found, so the current official values may differ, and this blue is noticeably darker than the blue most retail flags use.

Colour codes: HRC Equality flag
Stripe	HEX	RGB	CMYK	Pantone	Meaning
Blue field	`#000066`	0,0,102	C:100 M:100 Y:0 K:60	PMS 2748	The field of the Human Rights Campaign logo
Yellow equals sign	`#FFDF1B`	255,223,27	C:0 M:9 Y:98 K:0	PMS 109	Equality

History

An equals sign is an unusual thing to put on a flag. It is not a colour scheme with meanings assigned to it afterwards; it is a single claim, made in the plainest possible way.

Chosen against the research

Stone Yamashita presented ten options in 1995. Focus groups liked a different one. Elizabeth Birch and her committee overruled them and took the equals sign because it said one thing and could not be misread. It is now among the most recognised LGBTQ+ symbols in the world.

The red version, March 2013

The day before the Supreme Court heard the Proposition 8 and DOMA cases, HRC recoloured the logo red and asked people to use it as a profile picture. It became one of the first symbols to go genuinely viral as a profile image, with roughly ten million impressions in a few days.

A note on the organisation

HRC is a specific American organisation, not a generic equality symbol, and it has been criticised within the movement, particularly over its record on trans inclusion in the 2007 ENDA fight. People fly this flag meaning equality in general; it is worth knowing whose mark it is.