Brotherhood of Steel iconography

The iconography of the Brotherhood of Steel is built around its emblem, featuring gears, a sword and wings. This iconography is widely used to decorate their facilities, tag armor and equipment, and as part of markers identifying their territory. The gears represent their engineering knowledge, the sword is their will to defend themselves, the wings represent the uplifting hope.

Insignias
The Brotherhood insignia has evolved throughout the years and while it has retained its general appearance, the number of cogs on the gears, their facing, and basic color scheme have varied between iterations. The standard is nine cogs on each wheel, at times facing interchangeably, as both left- and right-sided have been in use at the same time, specifically within the Appalachian chapter, later with the Brotherhood First Expeditionary Force, as well as the Mojave chapter.

Flags
The Brotherhood has also used a variety of flags. Most simply feature the Brotherhood insignia over a flat-color field. One, featuring a white Brotherhood insignia over a set of red and white stripes, was flown by the Lyons' Brotherhood of Steel.

Decals
These stenciled Brotherhood decals are seen in the "Brotherhood of Steel, Institute, Railroad, Minutemen Weapon Paint Job" and "Brotherhood of Steel, Institute, Railroad, Minutemen Armor Paint Job" bundles on Fallout 4 's Creation Club storefront, created for Bethesda by the modder Skibadaa. The orientation of the cogs on these symbols alternates between uses. Some of the skins included in these bundles were later repurposed as Overseer rank rewards in Fallout 76's Nuclear Winter game mode.

Merchandise
Bethesda uses a variety of Brotherhood symbols in merchandise for the Fallout series; some of these designs do not appear in the games themselves.

Behind the scenes

 * The flag with the sword, gears, wings, and stripes was first used in Fallout 3, as a low resolution asset flown over the Citadel. When extracted, the texture can be recreated to produce the flag on the right. This interpretation is supported by the official merchandise (where a full size flag uses the red-and-white version) and Fallout 76's Nuclear Winter mode, where the Brotherhood of Steel minigun paint has a decal depicting this version of the flag.
 * However, the flag used for these is an erroneous recreation that was first posted on this wiki shortly after the game's release. While generally accurate, the sigil was oversized (terminating on the last, rather than penultimate stripe) and placed in a round field, whereas the sigil on the Citadel flag was placed with a stroke blending effect applied that gave it a rounded appearance. The original asset is based on a thirteen stripe design, with a burlap filter applied and the sigil placed over the filter with a stroke effect applied, masking part of the burlap filter. This version was subsequently used as the basis for the Brotherhood of Steel flag in official Bethesda merchandise.