An East End mission that took a military name.

The Salvation Army began in London’s East End in 1865. English Wikipedia says it was founded by the Methodist preacher William Booth and his wife Catherine Booth as the East London Christian Mission, a name used until 1878. The organisation’s own International Heritage Centre in London tells the start in more detail: in June 1865 Booth was invited by the East London Special Services Committee to preach for three weeks at a tent mission on a disused Quaker burial ground off Mile End Road in Whitechapel, and he went on to lead the congregation that became known as the Christian Mission. A 2024 series in The Gleaner of Jamaica likewise dates the start to 1865, under the name The Christian Mission.

The change of name in 1878 came with a change of structure. Wikipedia says Booth reorganised the mission that year, took the title of “general” and introduced the military-style structure it has kept as a matter of tradition. The heritage centre says that by 1878, when the Christian Mission became The Salvation Army, military terms and symbols had become standard across the movement: church halls were now “corps”, and flags, badges, brass bands and uniforms were all in use, together with a rank system for officers shown by uniform trimmings. The Gleaner describes the same vocabulary in 2024 — ministers given officer ranks, members called soldiers, and a general elected as international leader, working from the international headquarters in London.

The organisation’s newspaper took the same register in its title, The War Cry. The heritage centre reproduces a War Cry picture of 4 August 1881 showing General William Booth preaching while holding the original Salvation Army flag, the version with a sun at its centre.

A crest, a flag, a uniform and a shield.

The oldest of the emblems is the crest. The heritage centre says the original design was produced by Captain William Ebdon in 1878 and had appeared on Salvation Army letterhead by 1879, citing a letter from Bramwell Booth dated 18 March 1879 that carries it; The Gleaner reported in 2024 that the only change to Ebdon’s design was the addition of the crown. The organisation explains each element: a sun for the light and fire of the Holy Spirit, an “S” wrapped around a cross for salvation, two crossed swords, seven shots around the circle and a crown at the top.

The flag came next. The Gleaner reported that Catherine Booth designed a Salvation Army flag and presented it to the Coventry Corps in 1878, with a yellow sun at its centre that was replaced by a star in 1882. The heritage centre gives the same 1882 change and says the star is eight-pointed, set on a crimson field inside a blue border, under the motto “Blood and Fire”.

The uniform was standardised at about 1880, the heritage centre says, when a navy blue serge uniform was introduced for men and women. Men wore a high-necked tunic with a stiff collar over a scarlet jersey and a cap with a red band; women wore long navy skirts, high-necked tunics with white lace-edged collars and bonnets introduced by Catherine Booth. Wikipedia notes that the words “The Salvation Army” are woven into the fabric of today’s uniform shirts, blouses and jackets as a logo, and that the organisation has had an official tartan since 1983.

The shield began as a badge. The heritage centre says metal shields were worn as badges from the early 1880s, and it reproduces a War Cry advertisement of 25 April 1891 for the “Regulation Army Shield badge”. The Gleaner reported that the red shield dates from the early twentieth century, when the Australian Salvationist Major George Carpenter argued that the silver shield worn in wartime could be seen too easily in the dark, and the silver was replaced with red.

Design and documentation.

Charity identities live in public in a way few commercial marks do. An emblem has to read at the size of a lapel pin and at the size of a banner across a street, and it often has to survive being redrawn by volunteers with whatever paint, felt or tape is to hand. That is why so many charity marks rely on one strong shape and one strong colour: a simple silhouette holds up when it is stencilled onto a collection tin, printed on a sticker or stitched onto a cap.

Collection boxes and tins are small pieces of packaging design. They carry the mark, a short line of copy and a slot, and they are seen for a second or two as someone walks past. Volunteer uniforms do similar work at human scale: a coloured vest, a lanyard or a printed T-shirt tells a passer-by who to approach at an event or a shop counter.

Campaign posters are where charity identities stretch. Photography, hand lettering and bold headlines change from season to season, while the emblem, the name and the core colour stay fixed in a corner. Reading a charity brand well means noticing which elements move and which never do.

A shield outside, a crest within and a kettle on the street.

Today the shield does the public work. Wikipedia says the organisation decided that the red shield should be used as its external symbol, with the crest kept for internal use, so new Salvation Army buildings carry the red shield on the outside rather than the crest that older corps buildings would have shown. The heritage centre describes the shield as a logo used across the world and explains it as a picture of God as a shield on a spiritual battlefield.

The other public sign is the red kettle. WTOP News reported in 2014 that the Red Kettle in the United States dates back to 1891 in San Francisco, when the Salvation Army officer Captain Joseph McFee wanted to provide a free Christmas dinner and remembered a pot called “Simpson’s Pot” used to collect donations at Stage Landing in Liverpool, from his days as a sailor. McFee got permission to set up a tripod and crab pot at the Oakland Ferry landing and called out “Keep the Pot Boiling!” to passengers. Wikipedia describes the kettle tradition today: in many countries volunteers and staff stand outside businesses at Christmas, playing or singing carols or ringing bells beside red kettles.

The shops carry the name further. Wikipedia lists the local nicknames for the charity shops — “Sally Army” in the United Kingdom, “the Sally Ann” in Canada and the United States, “Salvos Stores” in Australia and “Sally’s” in New Zealand — so the brand is known in some markets by a nickname as well as by its formal title.

For a design guide, The Salvation Army shows a visual system growing out of a vocabulary: a military name in 1878 led to a crest, a flag, a navy uniform and a shield badge that turned red, and a kettle on a ferry landing became a seasonal street sign. Compare it with the American Red Cross, whose red emblem is protected by law, and Goodwill, another name carried on thrift-store fascias. For this guide we use shield red, serge navy and star yellow with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep The Salvation Army’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.