Issue 6: Full Spectrum
On true colors, summer camp, and leading with love.
🌈 The Rainbow Connection
“His life, hitherto gray became subtly tinged with delicate hues.”
Welcome to the first week of our Pride series! At Aura Creative, Pride is not a one-month marketing strategy but a way of life. As a proud LGBTQ+ woman, my commitment to living life in full, authentic color is inseparable from my design journey. My queer identity reminds me to follow my truth in every area of my life, and it is this same drive that led me to become a designer, to start Aura Creative, to work with clients whose values I align with, and to help those clients express themselves authentically, whatever that may look like.
We couldn’t possibly kick off this month without talking about color. Color is such an important symbol of LGBTQ+ identity. Each of the dozens of flags is designed with intentional, beautiful, and deeply clever symbolism (just wait until we get to talk about the pan flag!). Color represents individualism, the infinite spectrum of identities, and life unmuted. It is synonymous with celebration and inseparable from Pride itself.
How do we use color to express ourselves? And what do we do on the days when we’re not feeling rainbow? This week, we find out. Join me as we get inspired by the full saturated spectrum, sing along to campy queer classics, learn how brands can use design to actually support the LGBTQ+ community, and so much more.
✨ Moodboard of the week
The Full Spectrum moodboard is saturated and surreal. It’s a whimsical celebration of our true colors and the infinite beautiful ways we express ourselves and our identities. Each picture brings its own, unique, and equally beautiful take on the theme to create a collective whole exactly as special as the sum of its parts.
🔍 Question of the week
“How can companies celebrate Pride month without feeling too corporate pride-y?”
Oh, easy! Just make a rainbow version of your logo and you’re good to go!
(Just kidding hehe).
Corporate pride is a hotly contested issue even within the LGBTQ+ community. While many people feel that corporate support has helped normalize LGBTQ+ identities and increase broad public support (and they’re not wrong!), many brands also use the month to profit off of queer identity without meaningfully supporting marginalized queer people. Worse, many of these brands actively support anti-queer legislation and, in recent years especially, have bucked under pressure from groups that spread dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ messages, thus validating those messages and ultimately causing more harm than good (we’re looking at you, Target).
The LGBTQ+ aesthetic is an undeniably fun one that will only ever make you look great. But the rainbow means nothing if we forget the meaning behind it. The colors of the six-stripe rainbow pride flag stand for life, healing, sun, nature, harmony, and spirit respectively. The stripes on the trans flag represent gender and transition. The progress flag combines these while representing the leadership of trans people and people of color within the Pride movement. There are dozens of flags with hundreds of meanings behind the colors that comprise them. But collectively, they represent a full spectrum of identity, a fight for liberation, and unapologetic self-worth in a world that consistently tries to deny it. As a company, it's important not to view this as an aesthetic but as a calling to use your power for good.
The absolute best way for companies to celebrate Pride month is to support LGBTQ+ people 365 days a year. This means featuring gay and trans people in ad campaigns and other imagery, stocking queer-affirming products if applicable, supporting causes like queer healthcare, lifesaving hotlines, projects that combat homelessness among queer youth, etc., visibly voicing your support year-round, and backing up that vocal support with company policies.
But of course, June is a special time to celebrate and can be a powerful time to affirm that support in concrete ways, many of which are directly related to design. Here are some important ways brands can support LGBTQ+ people during Pride month and beyond without veering into Corporate Pride™ territory:
Don’t directly profit off of marginalized identities
Brands stand to gain quite a bit from supporting LGBTQ+ people. After all, queer people buy things just like anyone, and supporting the LGBTQ+ community creates a lot of goodwill well beyond that community. But it’s really icky to specifically profit off queer identity itself, particularly when queer people are being directly targeted on both a personal and political level nationwide and worldwide. Pride-focused products should be for the benefit of the community and as much as possible, those profits should be directed towards organizations that help the community.Support queer creators
Brands have committed a lot of impressive sins in this area over the years, including stealing artwork from LGBTQ+ creators, paying self-identified straight people to promote pride products when queer influencers are *right there,* and throwing queer creators under the bus in the face of bigoted backlash (looking at you, Bud Light). When queer creators are so often overlooked or pigeonholed into only working on queer-related projects, Pride is an amazing opportunity to highlight the amazing work they do and bring them the attention they deserve while also helping your brand. Hire queer artists to design pride merch and campaigns, work with LGBTQ+ influencers to support your products, and, for the love of Bert and Ernie, credit any queer creators whose work you use. Most importantly, make sure to pay queer people for their time and expertise, particularly where it benefits your brand!Ask more questions
So many Pride campaigns are clearly created without consulting a single queer person. Favorite examples in the community include the Bud Light “Let’s Get Beers Tonight, Queens” campaign and the Burger King 2 tops/2 bottoms promotion. It’s so important to consult queer people on any Pride materials, both because it’s the right thing to do and because you stand to waste so much money on a campaign that blows up in your face if you don’t. Again, here, don’t expect queer people to do extra work for free and always pay them for their time.Make your message inclusive and intersectional
Many brands vocalize support for LGBTQ+ people only if they feel they won’t get any backlash. This means they often leave out trans people, queer people of color, people living with HIV/AIDS, intersex people, and many other groups in the community who face the most marginalization and are often excluded from even queer spaces (and who have always been at the forefront of the Pride movement). They also ignore the often messy fight for justice and the very real struggles faced by the community at large. Support for the queer community means support for the WHOLE queer community.Stick to your principles
This one overarches all of the above. If you’re in, you have to be in. Brands do get backlash for supporting the queer community, and it can be hard to stand strong. But any brand that gives in to that pressure validates the backlash and actively harms the community. The backlash brands face for supporting the LGBTQ+ community is nothing compared to the backlash faced by the LGBTQ+ community just for being. Support is an incredible way for brands and people to use their privilege, but allyship that risks nothing is not allyship.
Businesses, both small and large, have immense power to do good during Pride month—and to assert themselves as leaders for change. But it’s so important to lead with genuine community support as a guiding principle. Not only is this the only way to be supportive in action, but we, the LGBTQ+ community, can easily tell the difference between brands that mean it and brands that will abandon us the second we don’t look profitable. If you try to have it both ways, you’ll make literally everyone mad. However, if you lead with the principles above and listen to what the LGBTQ+ community tells you we need, you can be an important ally in this month of celebration and in the ongoing movement for queer liberation.
Submit your burning design questions by sending me a message below. Questions can relate to design itself, entrepreneurship, workflow, or anything you think I may be able to answer. There are no limits.
🎧 Soundtrack of the week
This week’s themed playlist is inspired by the iconic camp classics that have worked their way into queer mythology (and onto parade floats) through the years. Many of these songs speak to the queer experience. Many of them celebrate living in full color, Most of them get us dancing. Click to listen or check out the playlist on Spotify!
🐸 My Favorite Things
Every few days (hours), I tell myself social media is rotting my brain and it’s high time I give it up. Then I come across an India Rose Crawford Frog and Toad video and it restores my faith not only in social media but in humanity and the world at large. Click below to watch one of my personal favorites and fall down the rabbit hole of Frog and Toad’s perfect little life.
Still/video sourced from @indarosecrawford on Instagram. Give her a follow. You will anti-regret it.
💭 Thoughts
A few years ago, I wrote this piece (originally on the short-lived Aura Creative blog) about the limitations of color in LGBTQ+ imagery, told through the lens of the iconic It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode, Mac Finds His Pride. The piece is five years old but the themes are as true today as they were then. Click the image or button below to read!
Photography Credit: Patrick McElhenney/FXX
🌱 Touching Grass
📖 What I’m reading: I bought about 5 new queer books last weekend all of which are first on my reading list for the month. I just started After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz and I love it so far.
🍋 What I’m eating: Real question, does anybody know where to get lemon bars in the New Haven area (if you know, you know)? Bar-ing that (😬), my lack of AC and the arrival of summer are calling for a chilled poached salmon with either my mom’s arugula-caper sauce or the epic blueberry chermoula from Matt Jennings’ cookbook Homegrown. And I have some potatoes I need to roast, so please someone remind me to make them.
📺 What I’m watching: I rewatch Heartstopper most weeks as it is, but it wouldn’t be Pride without an Official™ rewatch. This show is one of the truest, sweetest, and most beautiful expressions of the LGBTQ+ experience (the bi experience especially) and if you haven’t watched it yet, I truly can’t recommend it enough.
🎧 What I’m listening to: I have a running playlist (Gaylist) I’ve been making and adjusting yearly for the past 5-or-so years. It runs the full range from camp to moody to sweet and it truly never gets old.
📍Where I’ve been: I had the unbelievable privilege of attending Greedy Peasant’s Pilgrimage to Pride this past Friday (Pride Eve) at St. John the Divine in (medieval) New York. It was a beautiful celebration of color, identity, self-worth, and tassels and I truly can’t imagine a better way to kick off the month!
