Gather Up
In short independent project, developed over several months during the Iron Swords War, aimed to strengthen social resilience through military patches that express identity and foster meaningful conversations among soldiers. Inspired by Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the patches provided a way for soldiers to share personal and national values while maintaining military discipline.
Result Three series of hundreds of patches were produced and sold, and an Instagram page was managed with thousands of participants.
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need Iron sword war broke out in the midst of a significant social crisis surrounding the image and future of the State of Israel. The reserv military service united all those serving together, for a common goal - and allowed a unique opportunity to create a discourse of Israelis from different backgrounds on controversial issues. The project is based on identifying the need for these soldiers to express their unique identity within the framework of the unified army.
this show-case demonstrate the path from characterizing a social need to a product that made a practical difference.
Concept Development
The military disk was chosen as an object representing personal identity and military uniformity as a basis on which to encode identity affiliation. With the beginning of prototype development, the Abductees' Families Organization released an identification disk to the civilian market and a decision was made to copy the design process to another object.
At this stage, Velcro areas on military uniforms were chosen as spaces of opportunity where identity can be put on and taken off as needed. These are distinct areas where there is a difference in uniform between soldiers based on their unit and rank, and therefore it attracts attention, but there are no restrictive laws surrounding it.
Design Choices
The Israeli army is a unified framework with clear, binding state rules. In order to maintain the healthy tension between military and civilian, and between uniqueness and state unity, the patches were designed in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence - the founding document of the State of Israel. The use of the distinctive aesthetics of the Declaration and quotes on which there is broad agreement allowed soldiers to express an independent political position in a way that maintained the framework and enabled substantive discourse to mediate disputes in a space that sanctifies the framework and enhances the power of the group.
Icon Search
To make the diverse patches into a uniform series, an attempt was made to use the graphic symbol of the Declaration of Independence seal - this symbol was replaced after the production of the first round of patches because users did not recognize its context.
First round of patches
was made using a laser machine and a manual gluing process.
After producing the first prototypes to test market reactions, it was decided to change the color and textile material of the patch so that it would blend better with the military uniform and the laser cutting would be more precise.
The patches in the first round led to additional requests to purchase patches in the second round.
This led to the opening of an active Instagram page aimed at distributing the project and related content.
The content on the page was shared with thousands of viewers and two hundred followers.
Exponential growth in demand
The opening of the Instagram page attracted large-scale orders - mainly from regular unit commanders who wanted to use them as educational content and motivational shots for their soldiers. Manual production could not cope with such orders and tests were carried out with small factories to carry out the work. The quality of the execution was low and was rejected.
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Institutional Recognition
The World Zionist Organization recognized the impact of the project and the social opportunity it offered. They offered to fund thousands of patches for soldiers. After several working meetings with them, I opened a tender for Israeli factories to carry out the work, as the World Zionist Organization cannot contract with factories outside the country. The result was a significant delay in the work, and in the end the factory produced patches with color, font and spelling errors.
Expanding the design series
In response to consumer demand, a series of translated patches was created that allows soldiers to express their identity in their native language, thereby emphasizing their cultural origins. Selected patches have been translated into Arabic, Amharic, Russian and English.
Institutionalization and assimilation processes
Writing educational programs for the assimilation of the project in the IDF by authorized education providers of the Ministry of Defense.
