Having been a Coast Guard officer myself, I know what makes for a sharp, compelling unit crest. I also work in a variety of design styles, from cartoonish to heraldric. All of my work is completed in Adobe Illustrator as vector art (.ai format) for use in all my products.
Here are some representative samples, with a few notes about the design work.
Crest Touch-Up Projects (click a pic for an enlargement) |
| |
|
 |
STATION YANKEETOWN's crest is a great example of a sharp design that just needed vectorization. I barely made any changes to it, except to spell out "FLORIDA" (since there was plenty of white space for it). |
 |
AVDET GTMO basically just needed the iguanas to be colorized and the overall look to be cleaned up...as well as adding traditional text and rope border. Though it's a big change, the work was very simple. |
 |
GALVESTON ISLAND's crest just had to be vectorized, since the Army Institute of Heraldry only had a JPG of it. So I rebuilt it in Adobe Illustrator, and also tweaked the colors a bit to make it 'pop out' a little more. The name and hull number are especially more visible from a distance now. |
 |
STANT TWO RIVERS provided excellent vector art to me for touch-up; it just needed some text & coloring tweaks to be 'crest-worthy'. The most important change was spelling out "STANT" (I try to avoid service jargon in my crests), and also adding sea and sky effects. |
| |
|
Crest Rebuilding Projects (click a pic for an enlargement) |
| |
|
 |
In the ATC MOBILE C4ISR BRANCH rebuild, I spent the majority of my time making the eyeball look more realistic, since that was the focal point of the design. And also changed some of the coloring for a touch of realism & depth. |
 |
I thought the text in CSNCOE's original crest was too hard to read from a distance, so I made sure it was larger and more prominent in my rebuild. Also swapped in the standard 'official' USCG shield and a more stylish globe. And finally put the ship on a water surface to anchor it to the design. |
 |
The Flood Response Operations Group allowed me some leeway to make their crest a little humorous. I kept some of the traditional elements, and added in a heavily-modified clipart toad, as well as my own trident art. I also made the inner text much more prominent by using white on dark backgrounds. |
 |
The CGC IBIS design started out as a simple touch-up for challenge coins, but as I worked on it I felt it needed some upgrading to look right. I always like to put in the homeport whenever possible, and added in some detailing on the ibis. A more realistic lifering and sea effects really gives the design a finished look. |
 |
I volunteered to rebuild the CGAUX GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS design the instant I saw it. The addition of a more detailed Capitol Building, accurate CGAUX racing stripe and traditional font for the outer text makes this crest 'USCG Headquarters' worthy. |
| |
|
Crest Original Design Projects (click a pic for an enlargement) |
| |
|
 |
Whenever possible, I try to recycle elements of existing designs -- such as boats, qual pins, etc. In the case of STATION DULUTH, I was able to make the crest 'theirs' by concentrating on the lift bridge in their AOR. By re-using existing design elements, I'm able to give my clients the most for their money. |
 |
The SECTOR UMR crest probably has the most detail inner section of any design I've done. Just be aware, if you're thinking of doing something similar, that it's really hard to get this much detail to show properly on small items like challenge coins. Luckily, in this case, the challenge coin didn't look too bad! |
 |
NOAA SHIP PISCES presented an interesting challenge. As I was surprised to learn, the NOAA research ships didn't have 'ship's crests'...they always used the basic 'NOAA Meatball' instead. So I've set out to develop a standard for their crest design work. The primary features are a chain border, white backing with blue text, and blue inner backing.
The coat of arms is a little more complicated than Navy & USCG crests, but that's how the client wanted it! |
 |
I try to always do my crests as circles, owing do reduced costs for producing challenge coins, decals, and patches. In this case, though CGC DIAMONDBACK really wanted something out of the ordinary. And this is the result! |
 |
I show the CGC CLEAT crest just to give an idea of some of the crazy things you can vectorize and include in a crest. In this case, the Declaration of Independence! Took a lot of tweaking and recoloring to get it to look right, but I was very happy with the results. I can do the same thing with nautical charts. |
