About
It has always bothered me that privacy has no unified symbol. Every community has their own take on how privacy should be visualized. I want to unify the privacy community across the internet. It is my belief that, with a universal symbol for privacy, we will grow stronger. We will have a symbol to represent us. We will have a flag to fly.
Icon
The icon is a clipart created by librarian Gordon Dylan Johnson which can be found here. The size of the icon is large enough to still fit if the flag is cropped to a square/circular aspect ratio.
Dimensions
The size of the flag is 140 by 90 centimeters. These dimensions are chosen because of the dimensions of a Tor Browser window (1400x900 pixels).
Colors
The color blue (Azure) was chosen because it symbolizes security, stability, and reliability. The exact shade of blue used is the same azure color used by the flag of Europe, because of GDPR.
Design
This flag follows the “Principals of design” for vexillography.
Use it!
Use this flag for group chats, communities, profiles, stickers, patches, articles, wallpapers, real flags, anything you want to! Spread it around so it becomes a global icon for privacy. Even put it on the Wikipedia page for privacy if you can!
A flag should be easy to draw: I’d replace the hand with a stylized fingerprint.
Definitely not a fingerprint imo: that denotes traceability.
Fingerprints are harder to draw as a hand, maybe a hand with raised middlefinger.
I get your point and idea. And I agree, there should be a symbol. But in a world full of symbols, where there is lot of symbols that overlap or mean the same thing, it’s not a great thing to ad more symbols.
I would suggest, that people instead use the symbol for human rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Logo
This logo stand for rights and freedom, which is not in opposition to anything, but for something. Article 8 in the Human Rights, are about the right to privacy:
This should be enough. I’d suggest people use this, and support human rights in general.
I really like the idea of a flag to unify the privacy community but I’m going to go with the consensus with the hand: it’s probably a bit too complex. I think a flag should be easily made into a vector format that is easy to draw and replicate.
Say if someone wanted to draw a protest board with this on it. It would be really difficult to accurately draw the hand without good drawing skills.
Honestly, looks good to me.
Looks amazing :) here’s how it is when flying
Looks amazing :)
Thank you!
here’s how it is when flying
Is there a version that doesn’t use WebGL?
No sadly, though I could record the flag if you want, to see without having to use webgl
That would be great, thank you! I have a hunch I’m not the only one with WebGL disabled.
You are a dreamer, and this is exactly what we need. Two hands up for that.
But before designing a flag, we first need to agree on the symbolism.
There are two types of symbols. Anti symbols and pro symbols.
Anti symbols are easier to make, because they comes from reaction. Its easy to see whats wrong. “anarchism is order” and “stop war” stickers are anti symbols.
But pro symbols are harder because they require us to understand what we are fighting for. The rainbow flag and the aboriginal flag are pro flags, because they show what they are fighting for. The rainbow flag fights for diversity, while the aboriginal flag establishes a connection between people, land and the sun.
In short, I believe that a pro symbol would be better for gleedening people into the struggle.
With this in mind, I think we should fundamenrally understand why privacy matters, and make symbols out of that.
Embed a tracking pixel in it!
Haha, kidding of course. This is cool!
My proposals:
Idea is good, execution needs some work imho. As many have pointed out this is not a good combination of symbols. I showed this to 5 different people too and none of them were able to guess its meaning. I’m all for a symbol to show engagement towards the privacy movement, such as the privacy manifesto. Just not quite like this.
Not sure about an icon or flag to depict the idea of announcing Hey I’m For Privacy!! Feels like it goes against the whole principle. It’s along the same lines of stickers on a vehicle, stick family tells (most times) exactly how many people and animals w/types are within the household, gun logos indicate a high probability of an abundance of weaponry, a privacy flag may promote someone to look deeper into you with the premise well they want privacy so they must have something to hide, mentality. I’m private I don’t need to draw attention to me being private. But you do you. Just my opinion.
Can you explain why you chose the hand and eye? A hand print is a very identifiable trait, so it seems counter to the idea of privacy.
As I mentioned in the post, the icon was created by Gordon Dylan Johnson. The way I interpret it is that the eye represents surveillance, and you are holding up your hand, which is the body language for “stop.”
Looks like it doesn’t have fingerprints so maybe the idea is to say you can’t identify the owner of that hand.
i thought privacy have flag - anonymous
Cringe
