# You are allowed to write your own family motto

> Family mottoes read as inherited, which makes people assume somebody else has to have written theirs. Every one was decided once by somebody. That's still available.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/family-motto-shirt

A ribbon scroll with rolled ends, gilt hand-lettered capitals reading `WE STAY UNTIL IT IS DONE`,
hung beneath a plain shield outline with one charge inside it — a single wheatsheaf.

A family motto sounds like something you're handed. It isn't. Somebody decided it, once.

## What is a family motto, actually?

A short sentence a household chose to say what it was for, then kept repeating.

Old armigerous families have them attached to a coat of arms, and that history is where the format
comes from — the scroll, the shield, the Latin or the plain vernacular line. But the wording itself
was never ancient. Somebody in that family, at some point, sat down and decided what the household
stood for and wrote it in six words. There's no rule that this can only happen once, in the past,
to families with a herald on retainer.

## What makes a household motto work?

A verb and a condition, describing what the household does rather than what it values.

`WE STAY UNTIL IT IS DONE` is behaviour, not a value word. Compare it to something like "family,
loyalty, strength" — abstract nouns that could sit on any shield in any country and mean nothing
specific to anyone. A motto built from a verb names an action that a stranger could actually watch
this household perform. That specificity is what separates an inscription from a mood board; it's
[the same discipline that makes any short line on a shirt actually land](/stories/one-line-that-carries-a-shirt)
rather than reading as filler.

## Why a single charge on the shield?

Because one clear image says more than an assembled crest trying to cover every relative's hobby.

The wheatsheaf here is doing a specific job: naming one thing the household is about, in a form
simple enough to read at a glance and reproduce at any size. Real heraldry uses one to three charges
for exactly this reason — a shield crowded with symbols for everyone's interests stops reading as a
mark and starts reading as a collage. Pick the one object that actually says something about this
household, not an inventory of everyone in it.

## Why a scroll rather than plain type?

Because a banner implies the words are attached to a body, and that's the entire idea of a motto.

Plain type sitting on a chest reads as a slogan chosen once and printed. A scroll — painted, rolled
at the ends, clearly a physical object rather than a typographic choice — reads as something that
has always been there, hanging beneath the mark rather than announcing itself. It borrows the
convention of an inherited thing even on a motto that was written last week, which is a fair use of
the format: the household is real even if the object is new.

### Building it for an actual family occasion

This format works particularly well as
[the shirt for an actual gathering](/stories/family-reunion-shirts) rather than as
something one person wears alone — a motto written for everyone reads differently worn by everyone
at once. The wording only has to be agreed by the household making it, which for most families
means one phone call.

## Does this only work for a whole family?

No — it scales down to two people or up past a surname.

The format doesn't care whether the "household" is a married couple, three siblings who grew up in
one house, or a wider extended family reunion that only meets every few years. What it needs is a
group that shares the thing the motto describes. A household of one can write a personal motto too,
though at that point it stops being a family motto and starts being a private rule, which is its
own honest thing to put on a shirt.

## What about rights?

A real armigerous family's arms belong to that family, and in some countries the design of a coat
of arms is legally regulated property, not decoration anybody can reuse.

An invented shield with an invented charge has none of that weight attached to it — it's a new mark,
made for this household, and it can say anything this household wants it to. If a family already
holds a granted coat of arms and wants to put it on a shirt, that's using something that's already
theirs. If not, inventing one is not a shortcut around a rule — it's simply the honest version of
what's being made.

## Does it print well?

Yes, with one caution around the scroll's ribbon curves and the gilt colour.

The wheatsheaf's outline should stay simple — an irregular but clean silhouette, not boxed into a
rectangle, which
[is the difference between artwork that looks printed on and artwork that looks glued on](/stories/composition-for-a-chest-print).
The scroll's folds can use two tones of the same colour rather than a soft highlight gradient, which
holds up on fabric where a gradient goes flat and grey.

Deep green, burgundy or navy grounds all suit the ribbon-and-shield register, with the lettering in
a warm gold or cream ink — two, at most three colours total.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the wording and the charge at [JustOG](/) — the phrase for the scroll, and the one image
for the shield.

Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Someone still has to say what the wheatsheaf means. That's the whole household's job, not the
shirt's.