If we look at badges as a target or a motivator that brings some fun and colours in our crunching world, then the future badges must be tailored so that it is a challenging target but not impossible for every type of cruncher.
Due to the very large spectrum of crunchers (from the business use laptop that crunches only as a screen-saver to the big datacenter with tens of thausands of threads) I am convinced we must have have a large spectrum of badges.
When I started I had only one machine with a Intel Quadcore 9770, and that machine was also for personal use. Looking at my stats the first year I did in total over the first 12 months period 2.5 million WCG points and 3'700 results returned. At that time a sapphire badge was very challenging and in fact some projects ended before I could even reach silver, or ruby.
Now the 3'700 results are done in four days the 2.5 million in less than five days, and sapphire is in 6 days. It is clear that sapphire badge is very nice to have (it remains symbolic, to me at least) but now the intermediate steps fly much too fast.
Nevertheless the sapphire badge will still be very challenging for many crunchers in the coming years and so it will remain a motivating badge.

If we add other badges that cover (as an ex.) say: 5 - 10 - 25 - 50 - 75 - 100 - 150 etc. years, (per project or overall) then there will be enough badges so that any cruncher will have a next target to aim and that will be feasible if projects last long enough or supply enough WUs.
The cruncher that has set as a long term target for him like the sapphire badge, he will not be perturbated by say a diamond at 50 years. It is not in his playfield and out of his plan. But the cruncher that is at 25 and has the power will find that target challenging and motivating.
It is important that badges are at regular intervals but adapted to crunching power so that the motivation remains strong whatever the situation.
In fact it is not an easy task to decide how many badges, what span and what intervals, as we have to consider the evolution of the crunching capability of newer processors. If we want to avoid to rediscuss this issue one year after new badges have been released then we have to consider a large enough spectrum that go far away. Probably up to 10'000 years if we want to have the big datacenters part of the badge game for the years to come.

P.S.
And yes for those of you who wondered, my target is on the 10'000 one.
Cmon just kidding!

SKGIVEN, your proposition is very sound. I like the idea of badges named after noble gases. Noble gases glow different color and we all know what color Neon and Argon gases give off. These badges will look awesome.

I think a badge system has to be very simple and yet flexible enough to grow as needed. The current one has the former attribute, but not the latter.

Remember also that badges can be earned differently depending on the project, as in the case of AfricanClimate.

Blah, blah, blah. Idea, speculation; comment; suggestion; good idea; bad idea; agree; disagree, simple, complex, blah, blah, blah ..........

1. The current badge system is not going to be changed.

2. It has taken 5+ years to create 2 sets of 3 badges each. It is easy to expect badges in bunches of 2 or 3.

3. Each badge will have its own colour so any new badges will not be a duplicate of an existing coloured badge. This rules out new badges of the colours yellow, silver/grey, green, blue, brown, red. That doesn't leave a lot of unused colours, especially since the icon for HFCC is already purple, dddt is black and white is the universal background. How you think WCG can create 5-10 new badges is beyond my comprehension.

4. No one at WCG is interested in creating a large number of badges. (see #3 above)

5. WCG is not interested in creating a badge that only a few will achieve (eg: review history to date)

6. The number 1 reason to not create ANY new badges is that it MIGHT encourage crunchers to hoard WU in order to get to 5 or 10 year levels. (see new beta WU release criteria)

In summary, as I have said before, feel free to propose ideas, speculate and comment, but do not for even a second think that your idea even begins to meet the criteria that WCG Admin is using to create new, if any, badges.

My suggestion is 2 new badges for 5 and 10 years in Amethyst and Turquoise with some outlining to make the HFCC badge work with Amethyst. We wait and see

The outline is standard colour, the puppets were done in alternate colours as per the ribbon image, else in some combo's they'd be as hard to distinct as the Rice Sapphire.

As to the colors for the additional badges that were planned [2], a professional artist was engaged. Never heard a word since, but when me amateur tries, it's hard to keep one distinct one from the other, guessing that caused an unresolved rethink.

Until then, no matter what, I'll crunch 99.9% at WCG on CPU... it's the causes and not the badge addiction that is driving most, regardless.