u/BusEnvironmental1159

I wasn't properly educated on how copyright works with music on so I was going to post this on another platform (i won't mention the platform or link my socials because i don't wanna self promote) and it wouldn't let me post it due to copyright reasons for the song and I completely understand. I just want this to be seen, I spent days on this and this isn't even the full edit because of Reddit's file size restrictions haha. I hope you guys can enjoy this!

So I'm making this (first image) homage piece to the SOIDC community and once it's finalized I'd like to make these into coins for them. Designing this on my phone so I'm trying to do what I can to boost the quality (i don't have a laptop lol)

This is largely inspired by the old SARC emblem (second image) and i feel like the SARC one is really iconic. However, I feel like it mainly only represented SARCs and that era of SOIDCs so I thought i'd try to come up with a design inspired by it and make sure it encompasses SOIDCs broadly as a whole instead of just the Recon IDCs.

• Anchor for NSW
• MARSOC Spade integrated into the Anchor
• Navy/USMC Parachutist Badge for Recon
• Caduceus for the HM rate (to really centralize the Corpsman identity with the emblem)
• Southern Cross from various different USMC imagery

I got input and opinions from two active duty SOIDCs and they were both very honest and helpful.

I showed the first (anonymous) SOIDC the first draft and he said he thought it looked really clean but it was off. Instead of the SARC motto at the bottom like I have now, I put "MARSOC • USMC Reconnaissance • NSW" and he said he thought it'd feel more authentic with the SARC motto instead. He also disapproved of the anchor but, as stated above, it does serve a purpose so I chose to sit on the decision to remove it entirely until i could come up with something else that represented NSW. He was very helpful and gave lots of other input but for the sake of shortening a long message, I won't put it here.

I took his criticism into account and added the motto to the bottom in place of naming the 3 orgs and I also added the Southern Cross constellation in the background (the yellow stars) to further push MARSOC representation in case the Spade wasn't visible enough.

The second (anonymous) SOIDC was busy so he said he'd put more thought into talking to me about it when he had the time but he left me with "Initial thought is it needs Marine Combatant Dive represented somewhere" which was ironically still insanely helpful. This was also another point that the first SOIDC i spoke with mentioned and it led me to the decision to replace the Parachutist Badge with Recon Jack.

For those of you who don't know, Recon Jack (third image) is somewhat of a mascot for the Marine Reconnaissance community. The left half of Recon Jack is the same exact parachutist badge, the right half is a skull in the centered and a diver/swimmer behind the skull. The same diver from the Recon Jack insignia is the same one on the Force Recon and SARC emblems, so it just seems like the perfect decision to add a bit of heritage to the logo while also adding representation to the Diver side of SOIDCs without sacrificing the Jumper side.

Sharing this with you all to share my process and progress. I'll come back with the finished product with the revisions here and there after I speak further with some more SOF Corpsmen to incorporate more of their vision into this homage piece.