From the Department of Graphic Design
When ever I'm designing a character or any sort of vehicle, including little touches like patches with interesting symbols on them just adds to the believability of the design. I'm always paying attention to those kinds of details when I'm looking at reference images.
This week I found a goldmine of interestingness: Patches from classified USAF programs. They are collected on this late 90's era website with a descriptions trying to parse out and decode the designs.
It's kind of fun to imagine what they could represent. A couple symbols of note:
5 stars surrounding 1 star: Area 51
IX XI: 9/11
Website here: LINK
A cool book about secret program patches: LINK
Article about the patches and the book: LINK
-Jake