#twitterVforce – Our NEW Insignia – A development story

 The desire to have some kind of insignia for #twitterVforce has been mulling around for about 3 years now however, as usual having a pipe dream is one thing, reality is a different kettle of fish.

How, why, what, where, when & who springs to mind. As most of you are aware, I do, at times, come up with some crazy ideas for #twitterVforce, some have been achieved (#OperationFinningley & #OperationCosford being a couple) and the no no’s, well they will stay between myself, Dave & Sam.

The biggest thing for me was to find an artist who would take on the challenge to make the insignia come to life so through the power of Twitter (again) I sent a DM to one such artist and simply asked him

“How do you fancy this challenge however I have NO cash?”

The reply came back nearly instantaneously

“Yes, no problem whatsoever especially as it’s #twitterVforce”.

A big grin appeared – I am totally indebted to Stuart Fowle for undertaking the challenge and producing an absolute masterpiece.

You can follow Stuart on Twitter @ColdWarJets

Make sure you have a look at his superb website:

www.jetsofthecoldwar.co.uk

As you will see below, I have added plenty of images of the progression with a little bit of explanation as to the subtle differences to each one.

A couple of folk have helped me out with the ‘design concept’ & ‘proof reading’ of the insignia as its been in development so many thanks to Dave for the planform overlay V Bombers design & Squadron Leader Anthony Wright BA RAF for his technical input.

 Oh, and if your asking the Latin motto translates as:

‘Where there is harmony, small things (will) grow ‘

Rod

 

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Initial designs were hand drawn by my fair hand, as you can see I’m no Van Gogh. This is just one of the many scribbled efforts to get a basic ‘feeling’.

 

 

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The basic designs were sent up to Dave and from a distance I could hear the occasional snigger. This shot was taken off of a PC screen and was the first design sent down. As you can see it included the 3 Company Logo’s for the 3 V Force Bombers – Avro, Handley Page & Vickers

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Now, not to get into any kind of legal wrangling’s with the companies the logo’s were dropped, so as you see we had a basic planform design of the V Force – Vulcan, Valiant & Victor.

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Lets drag a Squadron badge off of t’interweb and stick on the planform. This was the image that was finally sent off to Stuart to see what he thought and if it was possible. The Crown had to go immediately to be replaced with a ‘shorthand’ version of the #twitterVforce tag

 

 

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The 1st image back from Stuart and WOW – looking rather fetching already and the planform V Force sits in the centre a treat. The hard work was yet to come ……

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As you are all aware, Squadron badges wouldn’t be Squadron badges without a Squadron Number – so in went our ‘unique’ number(s) 2010 – symbolising the year that #twitterVforce was founded (I realised later that I had done a blooper as you will read later).

 

 

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The hardest part of the whole design was to get the laurel leaves around the outside of the design & on top of that to get the scroll in place. As you will notice an extra Gold band was inserted at this point to counterbalance the gold of the reef.

 

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A bit of Stuart’s wizardry happened for the next incarnation for the design to try and get the laurel reef looking more realistic – Hand drawn markings to ‘bring to life’ the leaves.

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At this point I was feeling quite chuffed with the project but wanted an experts view on the design. Enter Ex Valiant & Vulcan Nav Rad Sqdn Ldr Anthony Wright. the design was duly sent to him for his expert view – 1st thing Anthony noticed was that the Valiants wingspan was not wide enough as in reality, she is wider than the Vulcan. Not an easy thing to adjust as it would upset the whole balance of the Insignia however when Anthony suggested a roundel in the centre and that the roundel should be based on the ‘Anti Flash White’ roundel it was kind of ‘Roger that Sir’ – so in it went.

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The balance of the design still looked a bit ‘out of kilter to me’ and so we decided to elongate the scroll so that it was the same width of the Insignia. Also at this point Anthony informed that I had a typo with the latin inscription – I had put in ‘crescent’ instead of ‘crescunt’. This was duly changed. and we also decided to increase the colour of the roundel by a couple of shades to make it slightly bolder.

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The finished result with its final ‘tweekings’. The ‘shorthand’ #twitterVforce tag had its ‘#’ removed and changed to gold – Ah, also the fatal typo that I had earlier made (and pointed out by Dave) was amended – Our unique Squadron number was change from ‘2010’ to ‘2012’ – the year of #twitterVforce birth.

 

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