Minimalist logos
Type a name and get six plain logos: clean type, a flat background and very little else.
By B Klug,
Free. No sign-up. PNG and SVG.
Plain on purpose
When I worked in Silicon Valley startups I needed a new logo about once a week. My view is that a plain one ages well: a name in a good typeface on a flat background still looks fine after the product has changed twice, and it still reads as a favicon. One logo from those days did not look good on both light and dark backgrounds, which is much less of a problem for a plain one. I think most new businesses should start there and add things only when they have a reason to.
Logo Lava has no switch called minimal. The look is made by taking things away, and each setting on this page takes away one thing.
Take one thing away at a time
These four are the same name and the same seed. Each adds one setting to the one before:
Edit and downloadNo settings 
Edit and download+ tone=minimal 
Edit and download+ bg=solid 
Edit and download+ fontcat and scheme=light
tone=minimal does the most. I counted 300 draws for Fernway. Geometric and neo-grotesque type went from 26 in 100 to 67, lower case from 29 to 43, and a plain wordmark with no mark from 25 to 36. What it did not change was the background: 28 in 100 still had a gradient. That is why bg=solid is a separate step.
The last step needs a note. A solid background picked with no other setting came out dark in 7 of 8 draws, which is a strong look but not a quiet one. scheme=light turns the ground pale. One thing I expected to work did not: scheme=mono made no difference to the palettes drawn for this name.
What the marks are
When a minimal logo does draw a mark, it comes from the 131 symbols tagged minimal: signals, dots, folds, glyphs, rings, brackets, crosses and apertures. They are thin, geometric and small enough to sit beside a name without competing with it. To keep the name on its own, add symbol=none.
Edit and downloadOutfit 400, horizontal, solid background, fan-06 
Edit and downloadFigtree 700, horizontal, solid background, glyph-09 
Edit and downloadWork Sans 700, horizontal, solid background, brackets-09 
Edit and downloadSource Sans 3 500, horizontal, solid background, rings-07 
Edit and downloadUrbanist 700, horizontal, solid background, tiles-41 
Edit and downloadSchibsted Grotesk 500, horizontal, solid background, link-14 
Edit and downloadWix Madefor Display 500, wordmark, solid background, none 
Edit and downloadSchibsted Grotesk 500, wordmark, solid background, none
All invented names, with the four settings from the top of the page. The last two add symbol=none.
A plain logo still needs a dozen files
Click a card to open it in the Logo Maker. The PNG and SVG downloads are free and need no account.
A minimal logo is the easiest to carry across sizes, which is a good reason to get them all at once. The brand kit draws favicons, profile pictures, a share image, social banners, black and white versions and a one-page brand sheet from your design. A single kit is USD 29, or the Starter plan includes 5 kits a month for USD 9 a month. A kit bought on its own is yours for good. A kit from a plan's allowance may be used while the plan is active and for 30 days after.
Where to go from here
If you want the name and nothing else, the text logo generator is about wordmarks only. The font catalogue lists every face in the geometric and neo-grotesque groups, so you can pin one with font=. For a software product, the tech startup page adds mono type and tech marks to a similar base. Minimal and expensive are close cousins, and the luxury page shows the other side: serif type, dark grounds and wide letter spacing.
For developers
Use it from code
https://api.logolava.com/v2/logo.png?text=Fernway&tone=minimal&fontcat=geometric,neo&bg=solid&scheme=light&seed=1Four settings, each taking one thing away: the tone, the font categories, the background and the palette's lightness.
