On 1 July 1972 a crowd of protestors marched from London’s Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park chanting “Gay is fun! Gay is proud! Gay is beautiful!”. Fifty years on, Royal Mail invited us to develop a range of stamps tracking Pride’s evolution to today’s mass celebration welcoming all members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

[Campaign] [Motion]

Challenge
How do you mark the 50th anniversary of the UK’s first Pride Rally on a set of eight special release stamps? And how much notice do you take of Middle England and the need for a conversative response? None! We flew in the face of dinosaur attitudes, and did something brave and joyful instead.

Solution
We imagined A March Through Time with the help of illustrator Sofie Birkin. Her free-flowing illustrations are a fitting tribute to five decades of Pride, from its origins in protest to its celebratory present. The stamps tell the story of a community fighting for and celebrating its right to exist and be heard. The panoramic format adds to the sense of a timeline. Produced in vivid full-bleed print, the overall effect of the set is a tapestry of movement.

Impact
This represents a huge shift for the British establishment: from harrassment of the first protestors to royal endorsement. For our part, we engaged Pride organisations around the UK to ensure that the symbolism in the design from flags to tattoos, clothing to handkerchiefs, was respectful to all identities featured.

Animation
To launch the collection we teamed up with Animade who through the wizardry of hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation made Sofie Birkin’s characters leap out of their perforations and into life. As the characters march off the stamps’ edges, the film transports us through the decades.