Originally published by Heidi Waterhouse on May 7th, 2019.
Hey, friends! I, the person you know who cares quite a lot about stickers, am here to say that now is the correct time for you to be thinking about June, which is Pride Month in the US. If you design and order stickers now, you'll have them in time for all the many, many June conferences we have coming up.
You may be thinking something like, “Software does not have gender” or “I'm not sure my company wants to be that political”. That's fair. But let me tell you what happens, every once in a while, when I have our pride flag stickers out:
Someone picks one up and says, “Oh. Oh! You have one for me! That's so cool! May I have two?" And then later in the show, they show up again, with a friend, and say, “Check this out, how cool is this?!” And then sometimes they ask if we're hiring, or they take our brochures. But they always walk away feeling that—this company has something for me, and I feel great because I'm not used to being seen.
It is so, so easy to forget that individuals matter, especially at a conference or trade show. And it's so easy to think that adaptations to address the ends of the bell curve are a waste of time, because there are relatively fewer people out at the ends. Fitted-cut shirts in large sizes. Low-vision-friendly signage. Kneeling or sitting to talk to someone in a mobility device instead of standing over them. But the people at the ends will become so devoted to you, yes, and your brand, if you just show them that they matter a little bit. It can't be lipservice—no amount of adorable queer stickers are going to paper over bad labor practices, discrimination, or systemic bias.
So! June, Pride month. What are you going to do for stickers? You can see that LaunchDarkly currently has bisexual pride (pink/purple/blue), gender non-binary (yellow/white/purple/black), transgender pride (pink/white/blue) and inclusive or Philly pride (rainbow+brown and black). The inclusive queer one is still a little unusual, but people who know what it is are pleased to see it. There are some that I want to add in later, including agender. There are some where there is not really a good, community-agreed on standard, like lesbian pride. But every little bit helps someone see themselves as fitting into and accepted and seen by the community.
Here are some resources if you don't know where to start with pride flags or sticker designs that feature them:
