How to make an icon for 15 cents ?
How to make an icon for 15 cents ? Use AI. Try locally something like https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=text-to-image&sort=trending&search=ideogram This is how i made an icon for my browser extention and it cost me 15 cents. In Poland i wouldn`t buy any kind of ice cream for that and here… i have myself a nice icon for my browser extension / plugin. Best way to generate an SVG logo, for me, personally. Just use the openrouter chat option and provide some inputs, leave eveyrthing on auto.
Why SVG?
Cause You can easily edit it in any txt editor. It is liightweight. Scales. Cause it is text and not binary data. You can remove or adjust element. Those are, as You can see, comment for ease of editing. Svg is a simple format, the output requires less token then an IMG, additionaly this is only 256 x 256 pixels so it makes the process faster. Since SVG is a vector format it would be the same, just different numbers You can export SVG to any format You like. For a web extension icon i need a png, one quick use of Affinity and im done.
DISCLAIMER
Such a prompt could eat my budget. Especially since openrouter chose GPT 5.5 which is one of the most expensive models currently. I was LUCKY that i got it the first time and it was actually reptty decent on token usage.
Remember to use only the amount of money You can loose, at 10th try if it would cost me around 20 bucks or more i would give up and just buy something from the stock and adjust it manually. Eventually go and use cheaper models. This was A RISK THAT I USED AUTO MODE. High end models can DRAIN YOU WALLET. BE AWARE.
The Prompt – 1st try
Need a logo for an app to put i the tabs as a web extension icon.
Name “Tab Arhivum” – it archives tabs and sorts them for firefox, like a library
Colors : brown and orange, ibrary style
Mood : retro and vintage
Size : 256x 256
The Prompt – 2nd part
Make it a bit more complex, i want to see tabs in a retro style like old books, use more gradient colors in between, render it if you can.
As i said, i want to emphasize was lucky, bastards just threw it straight into the GPT 5.5. It could easily drain my couple of bucks for all those tokens and i would end up with a nice round zero logo and zero $ on the account 🙂 Most important things using any kind of AI service…
Openrouter usage
How to make an icon or a logo for 15 cents ?
Just use a proper chat with a proper model. Text-to-image type. Try to throw in some free option and then move the higher end if You need.
Pro tip – make a base and then edit it manually or just be happy with what You got. You can always make it better later.
