by Mary Jessica Hammes
October 31, 2010

A blue and white image of a mother holding her baby to her breast, the International Breastfeeding Symbol is clear and simple—as instantly recognizable as the iconic ‘man’ and ‘woman’ graphics on bathroom doors or the ‘hand’ and ‘pedestrian’ images on crosswalk lights. But the International Breastfeeding Symbol is also friendly, welcoming, encouraging, and universally recognized across the globe whether displayed by breastfeeding-welcoming businesses, on the doors of designated nursing rooms, at outdoor festivals, at political demonstrations, or on posters, clothing, and even bumper stickers.

The artist behind the image is a man who is intimately familiar with the ins and outs of breastfeeding, and one who has an unusually intuitive feel for graphic design based out of necessity, as he was born deaf.

Matt Daigle (http://www.mattdaigle.com/) is a Los Angeles-based graphic designer, cartoonist, stay-at-home dad to 5-year-old Hayden, and husband to Kay Oldfather-Daigle, who is a sign language interpreter and actress.

You might have seen the Daigles in last spring’s episode of “The Antonio Treatment” on HGTV, in which the family’s living room (including Matt’s studio space) was redesigned. The International Breastfeeding Symbol is shown, full-screen, for a moment near the beginning of the episode, and later you can see the icon, framed, near his desk.

Matt knew he wanted to be an artist from a very young age, falling in love with cartooning. “Since I was born deaf, cartoons communicated to me at a time when television and other forms of media were not accessible,” he says. That love of cartooning stayed with him as an adult, when he began drawing comics based on his experiences in deaf culture, creating a web comic called That Deaf Guy and two comic books, In Deaf Culture and Extreme Interpreting.

When Kay gave birth to their son, Hayden, Matt decided that he’d be an active participant in his son’s feeding. “As a deaf parent, I had to decide how I was going to contribute to breastfeeding our son,” he says. “I bought a vibrating alarm that was sensitive to sound. When Hayden would cry, I would wake up with my wife and help her breastfeed. Early on, she wanted help getting him to latch on or she just wanted my company so she would not feel so alone late at night. After a while, we got into a routine. She would breastfeed Hayden and I would burp him and rock him back to sleep. It was perfect.”

About one year later, in 2006, Mothering Magazine, lamenting the ever-present image of a baby bottle to represent all things infant nutrition (even for designated nursing areas in public spaces), held a contest for people to submit ideas for the first-ever International Breastfeeding Symbol. One of Daigle’s friends forwarded the contest information to him, and—given his personal experience (at the time, Hayden was 1 year old and still breastfeeding) and his background in logo design—he knew he wanted to create the symbol. For him, the significance of logos as communication was all too important.

“I felt great responsibility in creating such a symbol,” he says. “I knew it was needed and that without an official symbol, communication about breastfeeding would not be in the forefront of people’s minds—especially the people making the decisions about signage or accessibility for breastfeeding. I made the symbol with the expressed purpose of providing a simple, clear, communicative tool to the masses.”

Since it was for the masses, he knew that he had to “cross many cultural boundaries and reach all people using a common language…regardless of where they lived or how they lived,” he says. That meant finding a design that “would not alienate anyone.”

Before sketching, he did some research, looking at many international symbols. He chose blue and white “because the contrast between those two colors really make the image easy to read from a distance,” he says. “Mostly, I didn’t want my symbol to be race-specific. I knew if I was creating a design that would be used all over the world, I had to use a color that would include everyone.”

After much research, he narrowed his ideas to five images, and both he and Kay agreed on the best image. It was close to the final product, but not quite. It still needed work. And then, he clearly saw the image in his mind—a simple but nurturing embrace between mother and child, acceptable even to those who might be uncomfortable with the idea of breastfeeding in public.

“I signed to my wife, ‘I got it,’ and quickly sketched it for her,” he says. “We both knew it was a great design.”

They were right.

It wasn’t long before they began seeing Matt’s image everywhere.

“I really had no idea it would turn into a symbol for breastfeeding advocacy, even though it makes perfect sense that it did,” says Matt. “Within two weeks of the symbol being chosen, a woman in Vermont was escorted off of an airplane for breastfeeding her daughter. My wife and I were appalled by the story.” As they watched the story unfold on TV, they saw the International Breastfeeding Symbol being used during multiple demonstrations. “That moment,” says Matt, “sitting there with my wife and seeing the symbol being used by families and on T-shirts worn by breastfeeding babies, was my most proud moment as an artist.”

You can download the image for free or shop for products (like magnets, stickers, patches, and T-shirts) bearing the icon at the International Breastfeeding Symbol website (http://www.breastfeedingsymbol.org/).

Mary Jessica Hammes is an Athens, Georgia-based writer, trapeze instructor, knitter, gardener, comic book enthusiast, and hula hooper. She is mom to Tommy.