An official mission patch, designed and animated for a real flight to orbit!
This project involved designing and animating the official mission patch for Arkadia Space, Spain, and their first mission to Earth's orbit named DARK (short for Demonstration Arkadia). I developed the concept through multiple sketches and EXTENSIVE (and I mean, extensive) research on NASA's space mission patches, a fun but also not an easy process. My idea was to create something memorable, symbolic and modern, and also a little nerdy, per the client's request.
Space missions have a tradition where every crew and every launch, gets its own patch. When little DARK was getting ready for its first ride to orbit, it needed one too... a small spacecraft going on its first big adventure.
Prepare for
takeoff…
Initiating
sketches…
I started with rough pencil sketches on paper (I didn’t have an iPad and Procreate at the time) and just experimented with how much of the composition the cubesat satellite DARK should take up, where and how the planet sits in frame and how to incorporate the name of the mission. In the second sketch, you will see that the name wasn’t even supposed to be DARK in the first place!
It was tough to give personality to a LITERAL BOX... but I had to figure out how to do it through perspective and layout. The final sketch then turned into the first digital version almost unchanged. Then came Illustrator and the vectors, endless pondering on what the colors should be, if there were too many details, if it even looked good enough... but hey, it’s just the part of the process and I think that’s beautiful.
Ground control to
first versions…
Takeoff in…
The final patch with little DARK sailing past Earth. The slogan of the mission was "Love at 1st Flight," because you never forget your first launch. I animated it too, so my vectorized cubesat satellite got to fly even before the real one did.
End
Result
In March 2025, DARK launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 aboard a D-Orbit ION platform straight into orbit, meaning: my work kind of went to space. More than that, this project showed me how design can take a complex space-engineering milestone and turn it into a super cool visual and how essential design is far beyond the creative industry.