The Best of Squadron Patches

Started by Pylon, January 09, 2006, 08:41:09 PM

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TankerT

#40
Um  The eagle IS the upper part of the state.

The design is final and in use.

/Insert Snappy Comment Here

Eclipse

Ah...I see that now.  Guess I need a geography refreasher.

"That Others May Zoom"

ddelaney103

Here is an example of a Group patch I designed - I may have others up later, but this will serve to illustrate the  themes.

When designing a patch, I tend to think old school - 11th Century, in fact.  Early heraldic design was trying to meet the same goals a patch designer does now.  Both are trying to create a distinctive "brand" - an image that serves as a placeholder for the person or unit.  There are a lot of complex rules in heraldry, but they can be boiled down into a few "core values."

Simplicity - KISS is a vital design rule.  One way to encourage simplicity is to ask, "can I make a recognizable stencil of this design?"  My WIWAC sqdn could and did.  This allowed us to put it on all our gear, which is useful at a multi-unit event.

Try not to put too much on the patch.  Besides being expensive (many patch producers charge based on how many colors of thread you need), the design will get lost.  Remember, your medium is a piece of fabric 3"x3".  It's all too easy to get stuck in a computer mindset and design something that looks great on the sqdn website but makes a bad patch.  As Moff Tedda has shown, you can enhance a simple design into a sharp computer graphic.

Take a couple of colors and a couple of devices (devices is the heraldic term for items used in a shield design - stars, animals, aircraft, etc.) that are important for the unit.  This allow you to make them large enough to be distinctive.  For example, the MD Gp III design has the CAP propeller and the cross bottony (the cross found on the MD flag).  Refrain from trying to put the entire history or all of the sqdn missions on the patch - it's a patch, not a wiki article.  This leads to the next theme.

Clarity - It's not enough to come up with a simple design: you also need to make it visible.  You can do this through contrast.  A core heraldic rule is "no metal on metal or color on color."  In heraldic terms, white/gray and gold are "metals" (silver and gold, respectively) and blue, green, black and purple are colors.  Red is also a color, but you sometimes see it used like a metal.  I used it that way for Gp III.  The colors used in the Gp III patch are also the colors of the Maryland state flag - another tie in.  A good rule of thumb is to back up 10' from your image and see if your design is still visible.  If not, it will either be because the items are too small or the contrast between the item and the background is not strong enough.

One suggestion is to "be improper."  This doesn't mean PG-13 patches - "proper" is a heraldic term meaning the item is colored like it is in nature - eagles have white heads and yellow beaks and claws, for example.  This isn't used as often in early heraldry, both because of the contrast problem and because it was the style of the time.  While it might not be the style now, making an animal (or aircraft) all one color is perfectly acceptable.  One only has to look at the 11th ACR or 1st Cav Div's patches to see how effective it can be.

Balance - this can be the trickiest idea to get across.  There are two parts to balance: "filling the shield" and weight.

"Filling the Shield" means that your items are placed so that there are are not large blank spots on the patch.  For Gp III, I reversed the CAP tri-prop in order to help fill the three corners of the AF-style shield, then used the crosses to fill the blank spots.

Balance is hard to describe.  When looking at a patch, you may get the feeling that it's "too heavy" on one side.  This can happen because the items on one side are fewer in number or smaller sized than those on the other side.

It can also happen because, while the items might be the drawn the same size, their perceived sizes are much different.  For example, if one side of the patch had a lighthouse and the other side had a hummingbird, the patch might feel odd, even if the drawing sizes matched.

That is a not so nutshell overview of heraldry and how their style can help the design of CAP patches.  I will try to get more examples (and try to avoid stepping on people's toes) when I can.

Daniel Delaney

[attachment deleted by admin- older than one year]

Eclipse

It's nice enough, and I am assuming those crosses have some significance in your area, but it does not contain blue, which is required on a USAF herald, and I would have taken the time to properly contour the lettering.

"That Others May Zoom"

ddelaney103

Quote from: Eclipse on March 15, 2006, 02:45:58 AM
It's nice enough, and I am assuming those crosses have some significance in your area, but it does not contain blue, which is required on a USAF herald, and I would have taken the time to properly contour the lettering.

As I mentioned in my post:
QuoteFor example, the MD Gp III design has the CAP propeller and the cross bottony (the cross found on the MD flag).

As to the color, I think that's a little bit silly as blue and gold aren't CAP's colors.  They're really not the AF's colors in the mind of anyone but the Office of Heraldry - I would be hard pressed to find any AF stuff that wasn't blue and white/silver.

The letters?  The ability to curve letters is just too dang hard in PowerPoint, which, along with draw, is what I used to make the design.  The proofs from the patch company looked much better, but I don't feel I have the right to use their image.

In the end, it didn't matter - I went to Uzbekistan (where my unit patch was green and whitehttp://www.greenweasels.com/) and the next Gp cc dumped the design in favor of a common group patch across the Wing.  Good thing I didn't sink money into the patch order.  Oh, well: sic transit gloria mundi and all that.

Daniel Delaney

Eclipse

Whether a reg / rule / guideline is "silly", or not, doesn't change it from being a reg / rule/ or guideline.  A place where many CAP people get themselves in trouble on various fronts is self-deciding a respective reg is silly and ignoring it, then getting defensive if someone calls them on it, especially if they incurred cost or effort which is now wasted because of the disregard of a rule / reg / guideline.


With regards to the design itself, Powerpoint is not a graphic design tool, Photoshop, the GIMP, or similiar are.  To try and pound in nails with a saw, because a hammer is too hard to use, gets you poor results and annoys the hammer.

This is one of the reasons so many of our insignia look like they were drawn by hand, by someone with no graphics experience, who wasn't interested in taking the time to get it right.

Another example are the various CAP unit insignias which feature fighter aircraft, weapons, cards, or whatever.  Why, because they LOOK COOL! Some are for units with an affliation to a fighter base or similiar, so you can see where it comes from, but these are not appropriate to our mission.

"That Others May Zoom"

JAFO

Quote from: Eclipse on March 15, 2006, 02:52:50 PM
Whether a reg / rule / guideline is "silly", or not, doesn't change it from being a reg / rule/ or guideline.  A place where many CAP people get themselves in trouble on various fronts is self-deciding a respective reg is silly and ignoring it, then getting defensive if someone calls them on it, especially if they incurred cost or effort which is now wasted because of the disregard of a rule / reg / guideline.

It's hard to get in trouble for a violating a rule that doesn't apply to you. I'm for following heraldry guidelines, but the USAF's specific heraldry guidelines simply don't apply to CAP at this time. I don't see a problem with a unit not using ultramarine blue and sun gold if they don't choose to, and one only need to look as far as a good USAF patch site to see how little of those colors appears in some of their patches.


Quote from: Eclipse on March 15, 2006, 02:52:50 PM
Another example are the various CAP unit insignias which feature fighter aircraft, weapons, cards, or whatever.  Why, because they LOOK COOL! Some are for units with an affliation to a fighter base or similiar, so you can see where it comes from, but these are not appropriate to our mission.

Agreed. That's why commanders have the authority to approve or disapprove designs as they see fit. I've seen a lot of patches that  looked junky or were made simply for the cool factor, but in the absence of a governing directive of any sort, a patch will probably be approved unless it's totally off base. The easy way to fix that is to get our own heraldry rules, or incorporate by reference AFI 84-105.

Eclipse

The rules apply if your Wing CC so designates - ILWG's does, and more and more Wings are doing this as visibility of th eissue is raised.

"That Others May Zoom"

Fearlessleader01

I'm not sure if my sqadron patch fits your guidelines, but its the best one I've seen besides the black sheep squadron. http://www.incountry.us/cappatches/CT/ct058.jpg
C/Maj Joseph Trujillo
NER-CT-058 X0
CTWG CAC Chair
GTM-1, EMT-B

MIKE

Quote from: Fearlessleader01 on March 16, 2006, 03:09:48 PM
I'm not sure if my sqadron patch fits your guidelines, but its the best one I've seen besides the black sheep squadron. http://www.incountry.us/cappatches/CT/ct058.jpg

It doesn't.  Shield shaped patches are for Groups and above... Squadrons use disks with one or two scrolls with the unit name and motto if applicable.
Mike Johnston

AlphaSigOU

Quote from: Eclipse on March 15, 2006, 02:45:58 AM
It's nice enough, and I am assuming those crosses have some significance in your area, but it does not contain blue, which is required on a USAF herald, and I would have taken the time to properly contour the lettering.

Just so's you know:

The Maryland flag contains the family crest of the Calvert and Crossland families. Maryland was founded as an English colony in 1634 by Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. The black and Gold design belongs to the Calvert family. The red and white design belongs to the Crossland family. (Source: http://www.50states.com/maryland.htm)

I'm all for a specific standard for the design of squadron/group patches, but expect that those units will be screaming "You'll pry 'em off my cold, dead fingers!" before they will change. My squadron's patch shouldn't be using the shield type design, but the majority of Texas Wing squadron patches are designed that way.
Lt Col Charles E. (Chuck) Corway, CAP
Gill Robb Wilson Award (#2901 - 2011)
Amelia Earhart Award (#1257 - 1982) - C/Major (retired)
Billy Mitchell Award (#2375 - 1981)
Administrative/Personnel/Professional Development Officer
Nellis Composite Squadron (PCR-NV-069)
KJ6GHO - NAR 45040

MIKE

Phase them out... From the look of the new Air Force Utility Uniform, that's the direction the Air Force is heading. 
Mike Johnston

alamrcn

This thread hasn't been going for awhile, but I liked the discussion. For those that don't know, I'm the webmaster of the "CAP Patches" website at http://www.incountry.us/cappatches/ .
I'm glad some of you have referenced the site and been able to use images from it!

All these cool CAP patches that that I see appearing on CAP-Talk... let's do some TRADING! I'd love to be able to preserve every patch I've see in my physical and web displays.

On the site, I have the start of a "Patch Creation" section that I think was put together about five years ago. It's been sitting in a rough stage, gathering cobwebs, and needs an extreme makeover!  I'd like to self-contain the page as much as possible, as hot-links always seem to become in-op eventually.

Basically, I'd like to include four parts to the page: CAP regs, USAF regs, heraldry (the largest portion), and ordering/manufacturing. These are the things I get asked about the most. The patch "templates" I have on there have been pretty popular too.

--------------------

NOW....
A few people have made a big stink about the shape of the patch, with shields are only used for upper level units, disks for lower level units, etc.

True - that is how the USAF does it now, however all of our wing patches (at some point) were designed during the late-40s/early-50s when the USAF was brand spanking new and used the Army's dirrections on insignia.

If we're going to change our patches to meet current USAF criteria, it needs to start at the top with the Wing Patches. They met AAC/AAF regs on conception, but the Air Force never requested we follow suit with their changes - including removing <cough> "division" patches from our shoulders.

So know that the wing patches have been removed from the shoulder, should we make shield-shape versions of them for our pockets?  I'm for it!  But until that happens, don't expect the lower-level units to start complying with a standard that doesn't exist yet.

FYI - a regulation on patch design HAS been proposed to the National Level before.

- Ace



Ace Browning, Maj, CAP
History Hoarder
71st Wing, Minnesota

schreiberboy

Up in the left-hand corner is my old squadron's patch (CA-441).  It's real cool.
http://sq144.cawg.cap.gov/
c/2d Lt Daniel Schreiber, CAP
LTC BnCo, Camden Military Academy

PhoenixRisen

Quote from: schreiberboy on June 07, 2006, 04:45:20 PM
Up in the left-hand corner is my old squadron's patch (CA-441).  It's real cool.
http://sq144.cawg.cap.gov/

Sorry Cheif, I've already put them up (both regular & subdued) - see my post up there ^^^.

schreiberboy

Quote from: CALcadet144 on June 09, 2006, 11:23:31 PM
Quote from: schreiberboy on June 07, 2006, 04:45:20 PM
Up in the left-hand corner is my old squadron's patch (CA-441).  It's real cool.
http://sq144.cawg.cap.gov/

Sorry Cheif, I've already put them up (both regular & subdued) - see my post up there ^^^.
ohh...i didn't see that before...well hey- at least we both think they're awesome ;)
c/2d Lt Daniel Schreiber, CAP
LTC BnCo, Camden Military Academy

PhoenixRisen

Quote from: schreiberboy on June 09, 2006, 11:29:55 PM
Quote from: CALcadet144 on June 09, 2006, 11:23:31 PM
Quote from: schreiberboy on June 07, 2006, 04:45:20 PM
Up in the left-hand corner is my old squadron's patch (CA-441).  It's real cool.
http://sq144.cawg.cap.gov/

Sorry Cheif, I've already put them up (both regular & subdued) - see my post up there ^^^.
ohh...i didn't see that before...well hey- at least we both think they're awesome ;)

Definately true, definately true (heck, even if they don't meet the USAF giudelines) :D.

Pylon

Quote from: CALcadet144 on June 09, 2006, 11:32:21 PM
Quote from: schreiberboy on June 09, 2006, 11:29:55 PM
Quote from: CALcadet144 on June 09, 2006, 11:23:31 PM
Quote from: schreiberboy on June 07, 2006, 04:45:20 PM
Up in the left-hand corner is my old squadron's patch (CA-441).  It's real cool.
http://sq144.cawg.cap.gov/

Sorry Cheif, I've already put them up (both regular & subdued) - see my post up there ^^^.
ohh...i didn't see that before...well hey- at least we both think they're awesome ;)

Definately true, definately true (heck, even if they don't meet the USAF giudelines) :D.

Which was the whole point of posting patches in this thread.   ;)
Michael F. Kieloch, Maj, CAP

afgeo4

Here's my current Group patch... working on a new one that meets all USAF heraldry standards.
GEORGE LURYE

TDHenderson

Here is the patch I designed for the 91st All Iowa Squadron that was recently approved by the IAWG/CC.