The Guilford County Sheriff’s Department has decided that decades of the same badge style is enough: The department is getting new badges for all of its patrol officers.

Among other changes in the design, the badge will move from a six-point star to a five-point star.

The new design will also be seen in the Sheriff’s Department’s document graphics and signage and officers in the field will have shiny new five-point starred badges to display to the public that they are arresting or helping as the case may be.

The previous badge design had been in place at least since the early 1970’s.

Max Benbassat, a spokesman for the department, said this week that the move was done as a way to update the look of the department.

“It’s a way to modernize it,” he said of the new badges.

The law enforcement website Police.Laws.com calls sheriff’s badges “one of the most recognizable of all authority symbols in the United States” and adds, “There are many different style options when it comes to sheriff badges, but they all keep to the most basic principle: the badge itself must be in the shape of a star.  For some departments the sheriff badge is a five-pointed, free sitting star. For others, it is a six-pointed star that has a shape reminiscent of the Star of David.”

A small number of department badges have a star with seven points.