Culture & Media

Gad Hakimi, Creator of the International Vegan Flag, on Designing a Symbol for the Whole Movement | Ep 009 | SoFlo Vegans Podcast

Sean talks with Israeli graphic designer Gad Hakimi, creator of the International Vegan Flag, about how a crowdsourced, two-week design process turned into a global symbol now flown at animal rights marches, mountain summits, and vegan-owned storefronts worldwide -- and the story behind SoFlo Vegans' own vegan-flag wristbands.

SoFlo Vegans Podcast

Episode 9 · Sep 17, 2018 · 47 min

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Topics Covered

The flag's origin as a side project while sketching a vegan superhero comic, before evolving into a crowdsourced Facebook design group with roughly 20 collaborators worldwide
What each element means: green for land animals, blue for marine animals, and the V shape representing humanity holding responsibility for them; white chosen for cost and printing convention, not (as some assumed) any racial connotation
Why the flag was deliberately released into the public domain so anyone -- artists, businesses, activist groups -- could adapt it without permission
Sightings Hakimi has collected: the flag at every Official Animal Rights March worldwide, on Everest and Elbrus climbing expeditions, and reimagined by French street artist Invader on a vegan-burger mosaic
Solving the flag's biggest early bottleneck -- how ordinary people could actually buy one -- by sparking a price competition among more than 100 independent sellers, driving cost down from roughly $25 to around $3
Addressing manufacturing-ethics concerns about Chinese sellers directly with one small home-based print shop, rather than writing off an entire country
Hakimi's own path to veganism: a high-cholesterol diagnosis at 30, his wife's insistence on cutting animal products, and normalized cholesterol levels within three months
Plans to launch country-by-country volunteer admin groups to track and share flag sightings and events globally

About the Guest

Gad Hakimi is an Israeli graphic designer and photographer who created the International Vegan Flag, launched in July 2017 and now used at animal rights events worldwide.