Open source logo ideas: built for the README, not the billboard
An open source logo has the narrowest brief in branding: it must read at 16 pixels in a repo listing, sit in a README badge row, survive dark mode, and stay recognizable after you hand the project to the next maintainer. The samples below are composed for exactly that brief.
Sample kits, rendered live
Every lockup below is a real render from the LogoRay engine for a fictional brand: original mark, open-licensed pairing, working palette. Open any of them in the composer and swap the name for yours.
The composer opens in the same monochrome register as these samples: bold geometry, uppercase wordmarks, black on white. Free to design, watermarked previews included.
Your logo lives at 16 pixels
The most common place anyone sees an open source project is a repo listing, a browser tab or a dependency tree, and at those sizes a logo is 16 pixels of room. That constraint decides almost everything: one bold shape, no strokes thinner than a pixel at small size, no detail that needs zoom to parse. Run any candidate through the logo size checker before you commit; if the mark dies at favicon size, it dies where your users live.
The favicon itself is worth doing properly, because docs sites and demo pages are how most projects are judged. The favicon sizes guide covers the exact files a project site needs, from the 16 pixel tab icon to the 180 pixel touch icon.
The README is the homepage
Most projects never build a website, and never need to: the README is the homepage. That gives the logo three concrete jobs. The mark at the top of the README, small enough to leave room for the pitch line. A social preview card, because every share of the repo link renders that image before anyone reads a word of code. And peaceful coexistence with the badge row, which means the mark cannot depend on a color that clashes with a wall of CI shields.
Monochrome solves most of this at once. A black mark on white inverts cleanly for dark mode, sits quietly above any badge color, and exports to a social card without a palette decision. The samples above are all-black on purpose: in open source, monochrome is not a compromise, it is the native register.
The mark outlives the maintainer
Healthy projects change hands. The logo you pick is a gift to a maintainer you have not met, so pick something they can regenerate, recolor and re-export without your source files or your drawing skill. A geometric mark defined by simple shapes survives that handoff; a hand-illustrated mascot becomes unmaintainable the day its author moves on. Mascots have a proud history in open source, but they belong to projects with someone who can keep drawing them.
The same logic argues for boring formats: an SVG in the repo, a plain PNG set, no proprietary sources. If the entire brand can be reproduced from files in version control, the brand is as forkable as the code, which is exactly how an open source project should have it.
Common questions
What size should an open source project logo be in the README?
Around 80 to 120 pixels tall at the top of the README, with the same mark exported at 16 and 32 pixels for the favicon and at 1280x640 for the repository social preview card. One mark, three exports, and the small one is the one to design for.
Does a small open source project even need a logo?
The moment other people star, share or depend on the project, yes. A mark makes the repo recognizable in a dependency list, gives the social preview card something other than auto-generated text, and quietly signals that the project is maintained. It needs an evening, not a designer.
How do I make a project logo work on GitHub's dark mode?
Design in monochrome and ship two exports, one dark-on-transparent and one light-on-transparent. A picture element in the README with the prefers-color-scheme media attribute serves the right one automatically. Marks that depend on mid-tone colors or thin outlines are the ones that vanish on dark backgrounds.
Where should the logo files live in the repository?
In the repo itself, typically an assets or docs folder: the SVG source plus the PNG exports the README and site use. Keeping the artwork in version control means every fork and every future maintainer inherits the complete brand with the code.
Clean SVG, favicon and avatar set, palette and type pairing. No subscription, nothing renews.