Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

A while back I wrote a bit about heraldry and family crests. I used my crazy Photoshop skills to create an interpretation of my family’s own crest. The image I mocked up was quite a bit nicer than most of the heraldry graphics on the web, and I thought it might be nice to make that resource publicly available. I give you The Crest-O-Matic, a tool for making your own family crest.

The seven shields above were created in a matter of minutes using this handy Photoshop file. Here’s everything you need to know about the Crest-O-Matic:

• Requires Adobe Photoshop CS2 or greater.
• 99% vector based, so it will scale nicely.
• Easily configures shields by toggling various layers and adjusting layer colors.
• Includes several common charges (the items on a crest): Lion, Fleur de Lys, Skull and Crossbones, and a really crappy sword.
• Includes a motto banner, several texture effects (dirt, wood, etc), and a few helmets.
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Download the Crest-O-Matic

Since you can do just about anything on a crest (see this extensive gallery), I had to draw the line somewhere. The Crest-O-Matic contains the most common divisions of the field and ordinaires, which should be enough to get you started. I’ve released this under Creative Commons. You can use the Crest-O-Matic for anything you’d like, just as long as you let me know about it.

Points of improvement? I would have loved to include some supporters (you know, like unicorns holding up the shield), and a better motto banner and sword. Man, that sword sucks.

The name search page at Surnamehistories.com is a good place to start if you’re looking to put this file to good use. Wikipedia’s entries on Heraldry and Blazon can be helpful in deciphering crest lingo, and the aforementioned Heraldry.ws is a great resource as well.