In a discussion titled ‘Logo creation?’ under the Support category, forummaster expresses overwhelm at the 12+ image requirements for Discourse branding and asks if there’s a simple, free way to create a logo—wondering whether others hired designers or DIY’d it. merefield shares they use Affinity Designer with export features. ondrej suggests free online logo creators or Adobe Illustrator, noting hiring a designer is overkill for small communities. forummaster replies they use Linux with GIMP/Inkscape but lack experience, and want a simple way to turn their existing logo into a rectangular header with text—avoiding tutorials. piffy recommends Inkscape and even offers to help for free. awesomerobot clarifies logos are optional: leaving logo blank displays the site title as text, and home_logo blank shows a home icon; minimal setup needs only logo and logo_small, with others auto-filled. forummaster confirms this solution works well for them—the title looks fine and the small logo suffices. awesomerobot also included helpful screenshots illustrating the fallback behavior.
I’ve counted about 12 different images required under the branding/logo section, and it’s a bit overwhelming.
Is there a simple way to create a logo for a discourse forum for free online?
There are so many different image requirements, did you hire a graphic designer to make all of these for your forum or did you do it yourself?
I create mine in Affinity Designer, then use the export feature to scale etc.
Hi @forummaster 
Have you tried searching for something along the lines of free online logo creator on google? Or if you’ve got Adobe Illustrator or some other software you can try your hand at something more personalised and fancy?
I think for many small communities that would be overkill.
I run Linux so I have GIMP and Inkscape but I dont’ really know how to use them. I did search online but there is a learning curve.
I already have a logo for my business but I need to make a rectangular logo for the main header image so I really just need to create the rectangle, insert my current logo, and add some text. Nothing fancy so just looking for a simple solution before watching tons of tutorial videos.
Inkscape is the way to go imo. If it’s something that is trivially easy I can even do it for you if you send me the details
Some good advice above, and while logos add a nice touch, they’re mostly optional.
If you remove the default from logo for example, your site will use the title setting as text:
If home_logo is blank it will use a home icon instead.
If you do want to populate logos, the most minimal setup would be:
logo
logo_small
Most of the other logo settings will be automatically populated based on those two if they’re left blank.
Wow, that actually works better for me. The title looks fine and the small logo covers the rest of the site. Thanks for the tip!