Placeholder logos.
Sixty seconds, not six weeks.
Type a name, pick a shape, add a couple of rules, download an SVG. It's the logo equivalent of a breadboard: good enough to get the thing working, and meant to be replaced once it matters.
- + The side project you'll rename twice before launch
- + A README header, a repo avatar, a slide deck
- + Filling the hole in a mockup so the layout reads right
- + A club, a one-off event, an internal tool nobody sees
- − The business you're actually betting on
- − Anything going on a sign, a truck, or a trade-show booth
- − A mark you intend to trademark
- − A substitute for an hour with a real designer
Text, a shape, some rules
The checkerboard isn't in the file — both exports have a transparent background.
In the SVG every letter is a <path>, so it carries no font
dependency and opens correctly in Illustrator, Figma, or Inkscape. The PNG is
rasterised from that same SVG, in your browser, at whatever size you pick.
Reach for the SVG unless something demands a bitmap. Ship it, then replace it.
What you get, and when to stop using it
One .svg: transparent background, cropped to the artwork with an even
margin, no font-family anywhere in it. The letters are real vector
outlines, so nobody needs the typeface installed to see it the way you drew it, and
it stays sharp from a favicon to a poster. If you need a bitmap — a GitHub avatar,
a Slack icon, an OG image — the PNG button rasterises that same file at up to
2048 px, longest edge, aspect ratio intact.
All four typefaces ship under the SIL Open Font License, which expressly permits the outlines to be used in a logo — commercially, without attribution. Everything is generated in your browser; nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Four typefaces and six shapes is a small enough box that a few thousand people can turn the same crank and get roughly the same handful of logos. That is fine for a placeholder and fatal for a brand — the entire job of a real mark is to not look like everyone else's.
A good rule: the moment you catch yourself defending this logo to someone, it has outlived its purpose. Pay a designer. They are cheaper than a rebrand.
Missing the utility you reach for every day?
Drop a note. If three people ask for the same thing, I build it.