In 2023, I was lucky enough to be selected to go on the 25th World Scout Jamboree in South Korea — a meeting of Scouts from all over the world, to celebrate our global community, think about where we belonged, and what Scouting was really all about.

After I was selected to even attend the event, I was tasked with creating our unit’s badge and logo — a responsibility I am forever grateful to be chosen for. Here’s the process I used, the result I created, and my reflections on it!

Considerations & Specifications

• Badges have deep historical significance. The World Scout Jamborees have run for over 100 years, and have a wonderful tradition where each scout brings bundles of badges from their own unit to swap. This means our badge had to be high-quality, visually distinct, memorable, and desirable to hold trading value. After all, it could be seen and swapped between 43,000 other scouts!
• Badges represent local culture at a glance. It’s an incredible responsibility to design something which represents the entire county of Berkshire, so I worked with my group and identified the Royal Swan as our leading mascot — nicknamed “Biro” for short! This was an iterative, collaborative process where all 36 of us produced concepts and themes, including a Black Swan, a traditional Berkshire Stag, various Berkshire-shaped badges, and finally the Royal Swan to reflect Berkshire’s royal ties to Windsor.
• Badges need to be thematically relevant to the Jamboree. This was a simple but significant step: I had to check that South Korea’s Taegeuk was the right way up, that the colours matched appropriately, that the minature flag was not distorted, that the 로열 스완 바크셔 translation was correct, and that nothing else on the badge caused offense.
• The badge had to represent everybody. Our unit had 36 other children, 4 adult leaders, about 72 parents, and many volunteers along the road. Everyone shared British and Berkshire heritage, and the common identity of Scouting — so it was really important it was hands on. Although this was my first time doing collaborative work, I tried to work iteratively, regularly get feedback, and involve everyone at early conceptualisation stages.
• Like most identity design, our badge had to be recognisable. This was again very iterative, as we experimented with form-breaking badges, with unusual, bold, sharp and soft outlines and shapes. In the end, we decided keeping the swan within a safe circle would help it scale without problems on our merchandise and lower production costs.
• Our badge had to go everywhere. I took a bold decision with this badge, and decided to learn Adobe Illustrator for the first time as I made it. Many units cut development time by creating simple PNGs, but by giving myself the time to start a new skill I created a versatile file without overrunning on development time.
• It had to be made in 3 months. That was plenty of time for me to experiment and explore.

The iterative process

I lost the early sketches, so I’ll describe what we did: our whole group created different concepts, discussed what they liked and didn’t like, and pulled references from across the internet.

After discussion, I began my digital designs. These happened over the span of a few months, as there wasn’t a tight time pressure. This allowed me time to use and understand a new tool on a machine which crashed whenever I selected anything.

I also had my first time trying version control and iterative feedback. I’ll explore this again in the project evaluation below, because there was lots to be desired, but I’m proud to have tried to incorporate it from the start.

I used Discord to post updates, get feedback, and keep the group engaged and excited. It kept our main groupchat free of clutter, kept a timestamped activity log, and a promise of what was to come.

At one point, I even tried to use Github as a way to version control my SVG files. I wasn’t successful, so several Creative Cloud files did the job!

Towards the end, I created two finished badges: a simple one, and a slightly more ornate badge which wasn’t used.

I’m especially proud of the swan’s head, as it was my first stylistic decision: our unit were adamant a side-profile wasn’t acceptable, but front facing swans look very silly. I had to go beyond real-life references and imagine a swan head which looked realistic, detailed and natural.