Gilbert Baker (June 2, 1951 – March 31, 2017) was an American artist, designer, activist, and vexillographer, best known as the creator of the rainbow flag.

[6] After his honorable discharge from the military, he worked on the first marijuana legalization initiative, California Proposition 19 (1972), and was taught to sew by his fellow activist, Mary Dunn.

[8] He also joined the gay drag activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence stating, "At first it was glamorous and political, but when the Sisters became more organized, it became a tool of the right wing and raised money for Jerry Falwell", referring to video and images of the group that were used for right-wing Christian efforts, "so I stopped.

Baker designed displays for Dianne Feinstein, the Premier of China, the presidents of France, Venezuela, and the Philippines, the King of Spain, and many others.

[14] In 2003, Baker and his Key West project were the subject of Rainbow Pride, a feature-length documentary by Marie Jo Ferron, bought by PBS National and debuting in New York on WNET.

Baker recreated his original Rainbow Flag for the Academy-award-winning 2008 film Milk, and is shown being interviewed on one of the featurettes of the DVD release.

In the second part of the miniseries Baker's character is shown sewing the flag and, later on, explaining to Cleve Jones the reasoning for the colors he had chosen.

[19] The children's book Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag was released by Penguin Random House in April 2018.

[25] The plaque was unveiled by the Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, French officials, Stuart Milk, and activists of Stonewall riots.

[34][35] As of 2021, the most common variant consists of six stripes, with the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.

[3] In March 2017, Baker created a nine-stripe version of his original 1977 flag, with lavender, pink, turquoise and indigo stripes along with the red, orange, yellow, green and violet.