Sludge Metal Logo Maker
Filthy and a bit wrong. Sludge marks tend to look like they were photocopied twice before anyone saw them.
Logo makers by genre
Making a band logo that works
A logo has a harder job than a poster. It has to survive being shrunk to a circle on a streaming profile, stitched onto a patch, screen-printed in one colour, and stamped on a kick drum — and it has to stay recognisably yours in all four. That rules out most of what looks good on a big screen.
Test it small before anything else
Shrink your logo until it is about a centimetre wide and look at it. If you cannot tell what it says, or it turns into a grey smudge, it will fail on a profile picture and on a patch. Thinner faces and busier treatments go first.
One colour, then decide about the rest
Screen printing charges per colour and patches are usually one or two. A logo that only works in full colour is a logo you cannot afford to put on anything. Everything here renders as flat ink on a flat ground for that reason — pick the transparent option and you can drop it onto whatever you like.
Match the genre, then break it deliberately
Genre conventions exist because they communicate fast: blackletter reads as black metal before anyone has read a word, block capitals read as hardcore. Following them is not lazy, it is functional. Ignoring them is fine too, as long as it is a decision rather than an accident.
Can I sell shirts with this?
Yes. All twelve faces are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 or Apache License 2.0. Both licences place no restriction whatsoever on the output — the image you download is yours, commercially and otherwise. The restriction in those licences is on redistributing the font files as fonts, which is not something this tool does or lets you do.
One thing worth knowing that is not a licensing question: a logo you generate is not distinctive enough to register as a trade mark, because anyone else can generate a similar one. If you get to the point of registering a mark, that is the point to pay someone to draw you a real one.
Got a name yet?
If you are still deciding, the sludge metal band name generator will give you two dozen to pick from, and the name checker tells you whether the one you like is already taken. Once you have a logo, the gig poster maker puts it on a show poster.
Questions
Is the band logo maker free?
Yes — no account, no trial, no charge for the file.
Can I use the logo on merch I sell?
Yes. Every font here is SIL Open Font License or Apache 2.0, and neither restricts what you do with the rendered output. You own the logo you make. What you cannot do is redistribute the font files themselves as fonts.
Can I get a logo with a transparent background?
Yes — tick transparent background. That is what you want for putting the logo over a photo or onto a shirt that is not black.
Will this make a proper death metal logo?
Not the illegible hand-drawn kind. Those are bespoke lettering and no font can do it. This gets you a strong, readable mark for a demo, a first run of shirts or a Bandcamp header.
What size should a band logo be?
Square 1200×1200 for profile pictures, wide 1600×900 for headers and merch, banner 1500×500 for covers. Check it still reads at thumbnail size whichever you pick.
Do I need to install anything?
No — it runs in the browser and the only download is the logo.