@Gepard  
Those shields are the crest from their emblem. Minus the prancing horse and plus their individual cutie marks.
 
My suggestion for a solution to the people who don’t like their mane colors as the background was to use the actual emblem colors instead, which would more explicitly tie their marks into their crusader foreverness.

@Keith Mowz
 
It’s not clear how shields with cutie marks inside them convey that meaning either. Which isn’t necessarily a problem; most of the cutie marks on the show are cryptic unless you know how the pony in question got it. The CMC basically got their cutie marks for loving and studying cutie marks, so a heart with cutie marks around it makes as much sense as anything.

@Gepard  
But the sameness of those marks would indicate nothing about their talent for helping other ponies to understand their own talents.

I get the need to have unified cutie marks for the (former) CMC, but looking at this it occurs to me that Sweetie Belle’s design would make a fine base for all three marks. Give them all the same asymmetrical heart design, adjusted to match the color scheme of each character, and flank them with little designs related to their personalities. Musical notes for Sweetie Belle, as it is here, then apples for Apple Bloom and lighting bolts for Scootaloo. ’Twould look better than the show designs while still conveying the idea that they all have basically the same cutie mark.

Apparently the intention behind Scootaloo’s butterfly CM was that, had G3 continued, she would have shown a hidden side of her that likes cute things like butterflies. Presumably it’d be a lot like Rainbow Dash’s feeling the need to hide her newfound love of reading at first?

@MindWave  
Butterflies symbolizing chaos  
But also transformation (?)

@MindWave
 
Flying?

@AH96  
Okay, but obviously this Scootaloo isn’t the same as that one.

@MindWave  
Scootaloo had a butterfly as a cutie mark in g3.5

Except now Scootaloo’s makes no sense. What does butterflies have to do with her?

There are still a lot of artifacts around Scootaloo’s mark.

@Background Pony #01DF  
Love when every time somebody disagrees with anything, they pull the ‘butthurt’ card. :-)

@Exedrus  
There is this banner in Hearths Warming Eve:  
 
But it’s most likely morally obsolete.

I’m glad they didn’t go that route.

@Exedrus  
They also are most prone to super-strength (Outside of the random bullshittery of Rainbow Dash supposedly having more hoof strength than AJ, seriously what) but that likewise doesn’t really translate symbolically to Applebloom.
 
Most of the complaints are with the crest colors; my suggestion remains replacing the mane colors and possibly the outer purple crest with the blue, yellow and red of the actual CMC emblem. Maybe fade them a bit because solid primary colors don’t really fit on three of the most literally pastel colored ponies on the show.

@Keith Mowz  
The symbol does relate to her pretty well (considering her lineage). I’m just not really sold on it representing earth ponies in general… In fact, I’m struggling to find any sort of symbol for earth ponies as a whole.
 
Tho I guess that’s more because the lore. I mean it is explicitly stated (by Celestia) that earth ponies share some special connection with the land that lets them do agriculture really well. But the writers couldn’t use this as an excuse to make all earth ponies farmers, cause that would be imply they aught never do anything else. So they’re seen doing pretty much anything. And since visually earth ponies look similar to the other races except for wings and horns (both of which represent the other two races far more aptly), its hard to bundle them all together under a single symbol…

@Exedrus  
Because the earth pony trait is still growing things. She’s an Apple, though, so what else was she going to get?

@Keith Mowz  
>”The colors are their own mane colors…”  
Didn’t Babs get let into the CMC too? Kinda sad that they completely left her out of this coloring…
 
>”…the outer individual symbols represent the three pony tribes…”  
Wing = Pegasus makes sense.  
Star = Unicorn mostly makes sense (considering Twi’s CM of stars represents magic). Tho it could also be interpreted as a symbol for fame.  
But how does Apple = Earth Pony? I mean sure the Apple family makes up a majority of the earth ponies that we know, but what about other notable ones? Coco? Carrot Top? Cheerilee? The hundreds of Earth Ponies that live in big cities and so probably don’t even do agriculture?

@shinjojin  
You mean how they together are their to help others discover who they are, and since they discovered this part of themselves together they are linked together in friendship? Yeah, we get it. Doesn’t mean the designs don’t suck.

Much better than the original, but the colors could still be improved for Scoot’s mark.

@Keith Mowz  

 

@Background Pony #9335  
Yes, because he is capable of regarding all of the nested layers of symbolism they have in their designs. The colors are their own mane colors, the outer individual symbols represent the three pony tribes, and the inner individual symbols fit their already established genuine skills.
 
Sure, they could have given then marks like the above ones, but then they’d have fuck-all to do with their stated talents of helping other ponies to understand their own.

LOL
 
Fans makes better desings
 
xDDDD  
.  
.  
.  
.  
.
 
 
:-(

These look very nice, but I would rather take the canon ones since they have a deeper MEANING behind them than what most people think, a meaning that some of you below didn’t understand apparently.

Apple Bloom was always destined to get an apple/heart combination cutie mark.