creations/heraldry_quickstart

mord's heraldry quickstart guide

come one, come all to my slapdash list of heraldry resources i dredged up from my browser history and heraldry opinions that i dredged up from my brain. this list is primarily aimed at alterhumans who want to design their own coat of arms to represent themselves in life.

i initially compiled it for the archetroper's guild discord server; i'm rehosting and expanding on it here so i can link it to other people. this could be considered a stopgap measure as i'm writing a more thorough guide to heraldry for archetropers, but it's shaping up to be a four-part series at minimum, so... to make sure interest in the topic doesn't completely evaporate in that time, here's some stuff to get you started yourself.

...it's quick in comparison to what the other thing's gonna look like when it's finished, okay?

introduction

what is heraldry? an archaic little pile of rules! kevin rhodes' heraldry for non-heralds series will introduce you to the fundamentals of what these rules are, and hopefully impress why they're important too.

then, to expand your awareness of what symbols and patterns are available to use, try heraldry of the world's glossary and compendium. it's an extremely thorough compilation of civic arms, cleanly sorted by what's in them.

then we must talk about the blazon. this terminological description of your design is integral to your coat of arms — it actually is your coat of arms, and any given picture is just an interpretation of it. if you intend to assume arms, you should aim to have a blazon for them before they're finalized. that said, it's a bit of an esoteric subject for the lay person.

for now, don't worry about it too much. i would encourage you, if you look at arms on any of the sites in the inspo section, to also read the blazons to get a feel for how they work. you'll start to internalize the format over time, like immersion in a language. use FINTO's glossary when you find a word you want to know the meaning of. for a grammar guide, consider kevin greaves' a guide to blazonry.

generating ideas

this is a list of considerations i largely adapted from the heraldry discord server. use them to surface some symbolism, but don't include every category in the final design! a coat of arms is supposed to be iconic. only the themes most central to your identity should make the shortlist.

what's your name? heraldists love a good visual pun. it's called canting, and heraldica.org gives a bunch of historical examples here. it doesn't have to be your birth, paper, or 'real' name. puns on usernames are increasingly common in the online heraldry community.

where are you from? hertiage was important in heraldry historically, but less so today. some people are really proud of their ancestry or home town or family's achievements, other people think it's uninspired to tie yourself to all that. if you go this route, you'll probably find that your home territory already has its own established symbols, colors, and maybe even heraldry of its own. just don't be too derivative.

what are your passions and ideals? people often display symbols of value and virtue on their shields because they want people to know what they care about. what do you hope to embody and promote in your life?

what are your interests and hobbies? our lives our defined by how we spend our time. if you're an obsessive gardener, photographer, or baker, it stands to reason that you should represent as much on your medieval nametag.

what are your favourite...

our favourite things are often so because they are meaningful to us. if you're alterhuman, it's very likely you've already got an animal, plant, thing or archetypal assemblage that says something about you. those are usually pretty obvious choices.

understand that there is no fixed symbolism here! if you want to say peace, find something that says peace to you. does the standard dove do anything for you? if not, throw it out! i personally think that the best symbolism is a little oblique. if you'd like to develop some more idiosyncratic symbolism, try playing with autonomancy.

inspiration

it really helps to see others' arms to get a sense of what's possible and internalize the genre conventions. feast your eyes on this stuff.

art tools

lots of people are intimidated away from heraldry because they doubt their own artistic abilities. i promise there are some truly dogshit drawings of deer in official medieval armorials, and that people love the mspaint scrawlings certain community members do in the heraldry discord. but if you're keen to make something good looking, there are a couple tools that can help.

heraldicon was once referred to by dodec as 'heraldry picrew' and that's exactly how i'm going to pitch it to everyone forever now. the UI is a bit beastly and performance is bad on mobile but it's the most powerful tool you have at your fingertips that isn't your actual fingers.

you can also search wikimedia commons for '[thing] in heraldry' and it's very likely they'll have a category for it from whence you can cannibalize an svg file and rearrange the bits into your own vision. the book of traceable heraldic art is a similar resource run by and for members of the SCA.

now, we've spent a lot of time talking about shields and not the rest of it. aren't coats of arms supposed to have mottoes? animals holding up the sides?

intermission: the rest of it

let's take a look at a full heraldic achievement, the arms of elmwood school incorporated:

pretty much everything about a full achievement exists to supplement the main character, the shield. if you know how to design that, you know how to do the rest of it.

the crest is the bit on top. it's like the crest of a bird, or the crest of a wave. it's not the term for the coat of arms itself! crests are a great place to include secondary symbolism. they're often a remix of the elements on the shield, and just as often something completly different.

the wreath and mantling are decorative drapery that originate from a protective cloth which kept the sun off of a knight's head. in art, they often take on a dramatic, ribbonlike form, twisting and weaving all over the place. by default, they take the color of the main metal and main tincture of your shield.

the helmet is a helmet, and the shield is the thing we've been talking about all this time. try to keep up!

the supporters are things you only get if you're actual nobility. that doesn't stop everyone from designing what they would have for supporters if they were nobility anyway. they're most commonly animals, but they can be anything capable of propping up a shield.

the compartment serves as something for the supporters to stand on and is often described as a scene containing specific flowers, rocks, or other natural features.

the motto is a statement of values, rallying cry, quotation, or anything else quippy and meaningful to the armiger. there are pretty much no rules when it comes to mottoes. you can even have multiple, or none at all.

...so, that's the basic basics out of the way. what follows is more theory stuff. largely my own opinion and observations on what counts as 'good heraldry', both in a design and cultural sense.

design theory

firstly, if you don't know what you're doing, don't use quarters! this is the one objective rule on this list. the splitting of a shield into quadrants is overwhelmingly used to denote inheritance. if you have four quarters with four different designs, what that says to heraldists is that you have four armigerous grandparents that have passed on their shields to you.

i truly believe less is more. i'm writing for alterhumans, who are generally more complex than the average person, identity-wise. if anything, i think the extra challenge that presents is enjoyable and meaningful to pursue. it's like a haiku.

the standard rules of visual design apply here too. don't wantonly include symbols with no relationship to each other — make them tell a story! have them interacting! use color, size, repetition, alignment and negative space to your advantage, as you would anywhere else.

also, it is generally considered poor form to use modern technology or things that are identifiably from pop culture in your designs. the argument is that heraldry should be timeless, and we can't say that a lightsaber or an apple watch are timeless yet because they haven't been around for hundreds of years to bear that out.

a little more on blazons

remember how i said the blazon is the real coat of arms, and images are merely interpretations? let's return to that.

if you remember, right up at the top, kevin rhodes introduced you to the rule of tincture, and the fact that there are only seven traditional colors. working purely from a blazon, two separate artists may choose to render your purple shield completely differently. anything from periwinkle to a deep fuchsia is fair game.

this is a feature, not a bug! while blazonry was invented to solve a problem that no longer exists, it persists because it invites artistic liberty from others who replicate your design. so you can't specify an exact shade of purple, or exactly what your dragon looks like, or exactly where its tail and head should rest when it's sleeping. the heraldist argues you shouldn't want to!

wondering what little twists this artist is going to put on their interpretation of your design is part of the fun. i think it's lovely that this community has a culture that celebrates the personality of creatives like that. there's also an implicit humility in it. this discipline is all about proclaiming who you are, but we leave room to acknowledge that our images are colored by others' perception of us too.

maybe it's not that deep. in any case, the supremacy of the blazon is often divisive to people just learning about this, as are the many restrictions on what you can do as a consequence. i feel the need to preemptively defend it. if a detail is really important to you, blazon it. but is it really important? that's the question.

conclusion

i've covered everything i think you need to get up and running here. there's still so much to learn, though. i've not covered any of the history of heraldry, to say nothing of the modern institutions which regulate it today. i delved into the community and philosophy aspects less than i could have. i excised a whole throughline comparing coats of arms to haikus. i didn't tell you about badges or standards or other heraldic accessories! i hope if you enjoyed this you'll follow up on some of these things on your own. i'll probably write the haiku thing as its own post at some point.

anyway, you've already made it through a lot. as a reward, i'll tell you about my favourite resource of all.

it's me. sort of. like i said, heraldry on the internet is a community affair and thrives on peers teaching each other, brainstorming together, and drawing each other's designs, regardless of skill level. you'll probably understand the principles and develop ideas a lot faster with feedback from real people. if you happen to be in a discord server with me, hit me up. if you're in the archetroper's guild specifically, we've got a whole thread for it in there. catch you on the flip side?