The second part of our information collection phase was to scour the internet for a clean photograph of each patch we had. Vivienne specifically said she wanted to look for actual patches, or at least a graphic that looked like it had a patch-like texture to it. This part was, surprisingly, a little more difficult than the unit research, at least to me. Of the 52 patches we have, some of them are from the 1980s or 1990s, while others may be form units that were deactivated a decade ago or longer. This presented us a different kind of problem from the one we had earlier.
Sometimes we were able to find a current issued patch, but the patch we had on the wall is 30 or 40 years old. The issue being that the color for patches used on uniforms changed over the years. They were in color during World War Two all the way to around Vietnam, from there they were green and black. In the early 2000s with the introduction digital camouflage the patches were again updated with the new grayish brown color scheme. Finally they were once more updated in the mid-2010s with the issuance of the current multicam uniforms, a tan and brown scheme. And to top it off, there are some patches that are in color instead of the subdued uniform tones.
Although none of our patches were in the digital color scheme, several of our patches were in the older green and black. We spent probably an hour trying to gather photos of these patches. After a while of being able to find a color image only to realize that our patch on hand was subdued, or vice versa, Vivienne instead decided to just go down to the existing patch wall and take pictures of the patches we couldn’t find online. After some deliberation we agreed that we would remove the patches from the wall and take good clear photos of them for the final exhibit.
Our last step, which we started on July 13, was to finally start working on the exhibit itself. We were told about an ai tool called Lovable by Jonathan Holmes, who has experience with it, is looking at using it for more displays in the museum later on. As only one person could work on Lovable at a time, I mostly left it to Vivienne who was, after all, the one who started the project. She had the ai come up with an interactive scrolling list of the patches which visitors could then tap on and receive more information about the unit it belongs to.
When I returned two days later I worked with Lovable a little more, by myself since Vivienne only comes in on Mondays. I also worked with Brian to filter out patches that we were not going to include in the final product, as well as pick several patches not on the wall to add. Since the primary aim is to focus on patches for units assigned currently, formerly, or had a relationship with Eglin AFB which the museum is located on. One patch we marked for removal was one for the US Navy since we deemed it to be the kind of patch you buy at a gift shop and not one that would actually be used. In fact, aside from pilots, none of us are actually sure if the Navy uses patches or not.
In any event, as Vivienne is only in on Mondays, I dilly-dallied on Friday, doing other things instead for there wasn’t much I could do until she returned. And so we met up again today, the 20th to discuss what I had done in her absence. We also started working on porting the Lovable mockup onto an actual touchscreen kiosk that will be placed alongside the updated patch wall.
Armament Internship 