The cannon has been part of Arsenal's identity for as long as the club has existed in recognisable form, a direct reference to the Royal Arsenal armaments factory the club was founded from in 1886. What's changed, repeatedly, is how that cannon has been drawn - a badge redesigned more than a dozen times across the club's history, from an early version depicting a full cannon in profile through to the simplified, stylised mark worn on shirts today.
Some of the changes were purely aesthetic, reflecting the design conventions of whatever decade they were made in - the ornate, detailed crests of the early twentieth century giving way, gradually, to the flatter, simpler shapes that became standard across football branding from the 1930s onward. Others carried more specific meaning: several mid-century versions of the crest included the motto 'Victoria Concordia Crescit', Latin for 'victory grows out of harmony', a nod to the collaborative spirit the club's founders valued in a works team built by factory colleagues rather than recruited stars.
The most significant modern redesign came in 2002, when the club adopted the badge that, with only minor refinements, is still worn today - a deliberate simplification aimed partly at trademark protection, since the older, more detailed crest proved difficult to register and defend legally in the way a modern football club's commercial operation required. It's a reminder that even a badge steeped in over a century of history isn't immune to entirely modern pressures like intellectual property law.
Taken together, the full sequence of crests amounts to a small visual timeline of the club itself: a Victorian works team's cannon, a mid-century motto about collective effort, and a twenty-first-century mark built as much for legal registrability as for tradition. None of it was designed as a single coherent story. Looked at end to end, it tells one anyway.