I needed to design a mission patch for the uniform of my character Stan Lowell for the fourth slide (see previous post) in my Facebook ad slideshow, so I scanned the art I created when I was about 14-15 years old for my series of “Skylark” stories and photoshopped a patch with some other clip-art.

It’s a little bit NASA, a little bit “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” logo and very 1970s as a result. As readers know, the character “Mac” McClanahan designed it on a napkin before handing it over to NASA graphic artists to turn into a mission patch.

Now, a quick note on accuracy: Most of the 1970s Apollo mission astronauts wore burnt orange flightsuits, one of three military colors available at the time (the others were khaki green and dark blue). I just liked the blue ones better, the choice of Space Shuttle astronauts later in the decade.

I chose the same basic blue for the background of the patch, since the mission was classified. As you can see, the wavy letters spelling out “Skylark” roughly form the shape of a bird and vaguely imitate the orange “swoosh” in the NASA logo.