The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Product decision · 2017–2026
Brandmark's Logo Crunch free tool drew 328 HN points to feed its paid logo maker
Free web tool keeps logos legible at favicon sizes via image filters, steering designers to Brandmark's paid logo maker; the 2017-09-25 Show HN drew 328 points.
Brandmark
What the business is
Brandmark is an online logo-design product, and Logo Crunch is one of its free web tools: upload a high-resolution logo and download versions tuned for a website favicon, an iOS app icon or an Android app icon using image-processing filters.
How it started
On 2017-09-25 Jack000 posted Logo Crunch as a Show HN. The page argued that a logo designed for high-density displays is usually illegible at 32x32 or 16x16, that exact reproduction is the wrong instinct at tiny sizes, and that line weight has a perceptual component — so the tool lets a designer adjust crop, simplification, hole-filling, thickening and thin-line boosts per resolution, with downloads sized for favicons and iOS and Android icons.
What happened
The launch thread was active enough to strain the server: Jack000 said it was at 90x load from HN traffic, uploads eventually completed, and he temporarily limited the random-logo demo to one cached image to keep the site up, fixing same-day browser bugs such as a CORS-blocked jQuery load. The thread reached 328 points and 65 comments.
How it ended up
Logo Crunch is still live on brandmark.io as of 2026-09-05 as a free tool beside Brandmark's logo maker; the material discloses no funding or revenue figures.
Background
Brandmark is an online logo-design product, and Logo Crunch is the free multi-resolution tool it used as a door in: upload a high-resolution logo and get versions tuned for a website favicon or an iOS or Android app icon. The bet was that designers hitting the 16-pixel problem would trust a brand that solved it properly, then come back when they needed a logo made.
The technical wedge was treating each resolution as a design problem rather than a scaling exercise: morphological opening simplifies fine details, closing fills small holes, dilation thickens strokes, and a convolutional filter isolates thin lines so only they get boosted. The page contrasted this with naive favicon generators that blur logos down, and offered downloadable icons plus a random demo.
The 2017-09-25 Show HN reached 328 points and 65 comments; traffic was heavy enough that the maker capped the random demo to one cached image. As of 2026-09-05 Logo Crunch remains live on brandmark.io alongside the Brandmark logo maker, with no funding or revenue disclosed in the material.
What has to be true
- It attacked a universal, concrete pain: every designer ships a favicon, and thin lines that look right at 400px vanish at 16px.
- The filters were explainable and visibly better than naive scaling, so the tool demonstrated competence instead of asking for trust.
- Free, no-account downloads removed every adoption barrier, while the favicon and iOS/Android outputs matched exactly the assets a designer already has to produce.
- Each use doubled as product marketing for Brandmark's paid logo maker, turning a small utility into a funnel.
What can be applied
A free tool is a funnel when it fixes one precise moment of pain — shrinking a logo to 16px — with visibly better results, so every download proves the brand's quality before the paid upsell.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-05 Logo Crunch is live on brandmark.io: visitors can still upload a logo, adjust crop, simplify, fill-holes, thicken and thin-line-boost controls, and download favicon, iOS and Android icons, while the page points to Brandmark's logo maker and its design-tools hub. The material discloses no company size, funding or revenue, so the case ends at a free tool that has stayed useful for close to a decade.
Sources
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