Free Discord Server Icon Maker

512 by 512 pixels, square, saved as a PNG. That is what Discord asks for and what this tool makes.

• •Square, always. Discord fits a circle inside the square you give it.
• •512 pixels a side. Smaller and Discord stretches it soft.
• •1024 works too. Extra room costs nothing but a slightly bigger file.
• •PNG, not JPG. JPG mushes the edges of letters and flat color.

There is one size for every place Discord shows your server. Your server list, the invite page, a mention: all the same file, drawn smaller or larger. So it has to be big enough for the largest use and clear at the smallest.

Discord does not squash your image to make it square. Upload something that is not square and it crops instead, and its uploader hands you a small zoom box to pick the part it keeps. Starting square means you have already made that choice, at full size, here.

Discord stores the square and shows the circle. The corners are gone everywhere, on every screen, forever. That is 21% of the picture you upload.

Which is why these four things go wrong so often:

• •A logo tucked into a corner is not there at all.
• •A word that runs edge to edge loses its first and last letter.
• •A square frame or border becomes four disconnected arcs.
• •A photograph loses whatever you thought was the subject.

The safe area is the margin inside the circle. Letters that touch the crop edge look clipped even when they survive it. A border sits in that outer band too. So the usable middle is smaller than the circle itself. The tool draws both rings, and keeps your text inside the inner one on its own.

The two previews above are the point of this page. One is the file you download. The other is what your members see. Check the second one before you upload, not after.

1. 1.Press a preset, or set the colors yourself. A preset changes the background, the border, and the type. It leaves your own letters alone, so you can try all 4 without retyping anything.
2. 2.Pick a background. One color is the safest and reads best small. Two colors adds a gradient. Your own image takes a PNG, JPG, or WebP off your device. Use Fit the whole image in for a logo, so nothing gets cropped, and Fill the frame for a photo.
3. 3.Type your letters. 6 characters is the most it takes, and 2 or 3 read best. Anything longer shrinks to stay inside the circle rather than running off it. Then pick a font, a text size, and a text color.
4. 4.Turn on a border if you want one. It is drawn as a ring just inside the crop, in thin, medium, thick. A ring survives the circle. A square frame gets cut into four corners. A light ring is what separates a dark icon from Discord's dark sidebar.
5. 5.Hit Download PNG. You get a square file at the size printed next to the button. Upload it in Discord under Server Settings, then Overview. The guides are drawn in the preview only, so they never reach the file.

Your icon is a column of small circles in someone's sidebar, next to 30 others. It is drawn at roughly 48 pixels there. In a mention, a search result, or a notification it is nearer 32, and that smallest size is the one it has to survive. Everything below follows from that:

• •Two or three letters. Your initials, not your full name.
• •One strong color. Members find you by color before they read.
• •High contrast. Light letters on dark, or dark on light.
• •No thin lines. A 2 pixel line at full size disappears at 32.
• •No photographs. Detail everywhere reads as noise nowhere.
• •No taglines. Nobody has ever read one on an icon.
• •Fill the circle. Empty margin is size you gave away.

Test it the cheap way. Shrink the circle preview until it is the size of your fingernail. If you can still tell it apart from the icons around it, it works. If not, the fix is almost always fewer letters and more contrast, not a better drawing.

Pick the font for the shape, not the personality. The display face has the most character per letter and suits 2 initials. The fixed-width one gives every letter the same room, which keeps a 3 letter set even. The plain one gets out of the way when the color is doing the work.

Size the text to the large end if you have two characters and the small end if you have five. The tool shrinks anything that will not fit, so it never spills. But text that shrank a long way ends up smaller than the size you picked.

Then use the same colors here, on your banner, and on your roles. Three matching pieces read as a brand. Three different ones read as three people taking turns.