US: CIA, Deparment of Paranormal Affairs crest.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency: Department of Paranormal Affairs


Info:

In the story concept, the DPA is a small, underfunded department that was formed after a bizzare encounter by one of the CIA's top agents attempting a Hit on a National Security threat.
On paper, the department is an underfunded joke said to be for those agents who are to valueable to be let off, but nuts (and therefor, 'dangerous' ) , and that its job is for them to investigate so-called paranormal events. Like Occult happenings, UFO abductions.... other stuff better suited for Moulder and Skully...

In reality, the department is still underfunded, but actually has a lot of high level clout as the bizzare incident is considered a matter of not just National, but Global security, as there was live evidence of the situation brought back and clear, non-conflicting field agent reports.

The DPA's job is the clandestine collection of evidence and information about true paranormal activities, the ascertaining of their threats to mankind, and subsiquent neutralization of said threats.

In story, the department uncovers the secret of the Japanese influence hero archetype, the 'Magical Girl', who are just as every bit as silly and frilly as they are depicted. The draw back, is whoever they're up against, isn't so corny. In fact, they're as deadly as modern special forces can get. It is the DPA's job at this point to counter-attack this hidden threat to man kind, and train these 'Magical Girls' to be more than just soldiers of love and justice, but to be more awesome in every respect than should be allowed by someone fighting in a miniskirt and high heals.


NOTES:

For the design, it actually took me a week to work out the base concept. I dinked around with things like Hearts and stars, and all the classic magical girl imagery, classic 'women' symbols, but nothing had enough of a serious business tone to it that just didn't seem convoluted.

Finally, I settled on something you see in a lot of Magical girls, but never really played up. Bow tied ribbons. It was perfect, but still seemed hard to pull off. How do you make something frilly like a ribbon, not seem to frilly in a symbol?
I spent two whole days agonizing on just how to take a simple bow, and make it badass. Ultimately, on my own, I failed.

However, I went to bed thinking about looking into the relations to the CIA I'd be pulling, and started examining crests for the CIA, the US, etc... and decided that by the end of the movie plot I came up with, the DPA would have formed a coherent unit that justified its existence. They'd get a seal of some kind that identified them.

So I built a circular crest and started playing. I tossed in a classic magical girl eight pointed star magic circle shape to kind of remind people of the magic in it, and started working on the ribbon. It ended up being very interesting that I found a way to make the ribbon look almost like a shield by making the loose ends fold back into each other and meet. I put US styled stars in a nice metalic blue tone around the points of the magic circle and went through colors.

Once I depiected the US in the basic Red-White-Blue color scheme (as would be appropiet for a CIA based unit), I reviewed it a little and decided on a little more detail.
I cleaned up the lower part of the ribbon and added a gradient that simulated the stripes part of the american flag, as if the back of the ribbon was cut from it. I subdued the color slightly so that it didn't stand out too saturatingly bright and made the magic circle lines glowed.

I hadn't figured out what I wanted to do with the very middle, as I still thought it was missing something there since all the shaping was drawing eyes to the center.
After a suggestion from a friend, I experimented with various star-field effects as he said 'If it's dealing with the Paranormal, maybe it should be a "peephole into another universe"... '

So in the end, the result is what you see above. The ribbon of course, repirsents the bond of the Magical Girls in the story to the DPA, and of course, the magic reprisented by the Magic Circle, and the desire to protect National (SEE: Global) Security by the United States features of the crest.

The CIA is here to protect you, even if you don't like how they do it at times, and this department's crest serves as a warning to the supernatural... don't fork with US. We have the Elite... (Even if they whine when they stub their toes.)