Five marks drawn as real vectors in the Lantern palette, each shown at the size it will actually be used, plus a round of AI exploration alongside. Everything here is editable SVG, not a picture of a logo.
How to read these
A logo lives or dies at 32 pixels, so each mark below is shown at 120px, 48px, 32px and 24px on the night ground it will sit on. Several concepts that looked fine large fell apart small, and I have said so rather than only showing the flattering size.
I cut two of my own concepts. A lighthouse with light arcs read as a wifi symbol, and a pair of flames read as water droplets after four attempts. Both are described at the bottom rather than padded into the set.
The five marks
Hand-drawn as SVG, so every one is production-ready and editable.
Mark A
Hearthlight
A lantern whose body is a house. The pitched roof is the lantern's cap, the warm window is the flame.
Why it works
Home and light in one shape rather than two stacked objects. It is the only mark here that says homeschool and not just light. Holds its silhouette at 32px, which is where most marks fall apart.
48px
32px
24px
16px
Watch out: The handle can read as a chimney at a glance. That is arguably a feature.
Mark B
The Keeper
An open book held in the negative space of a flame.
Why it works
The two ideas the product is actually about, light and learning, in one shape. The strongest mark at large sizes and the most distinctive of the set.
48px
32px
24px
16px
Watch out: The book detail disappears below about 24px, where it flattens to a plain flame. Would need a simplified small-size variant.
Mark C
The Window
A four-pane window at night with one pane lit.
Why it works
The most emotionally accurate mark for the audience we found: a home with a light on, seen from outside in the dark. Quiet, warm, adult. It does not try to be a children's logo.
48px
32px
24px
16px
Watch out: A lit window is not an uncommon idea. It would need a distinctive proportion or pane rhythm to be defensible as a trademark.
Mark D
The Doorway
An arched door standing open, with light spilling out.
Why it works
Invitation rather than institution. Reads as somewhere you walk into, which fits a product a family chooses rather than is assigned.
48px
32px
24px
16px
Watch out: The weakest at small sizes. The spill of light thins to a sliver and the mark reads as a plain arch.
Mark E
The Guide
A house with a four-point star set into the gable.
Why it works
The simplest and most immediately legible. Clean silhouette, works everywhere, easiest to animate.
48px
32px
24px
16px
Watch out: The four-point sparkle is currently the universal shorthand for an AI feature. It may read as a tech badge rather than a guiding star, which is a real risk in 2026.
The same five on paper
The system has two surfaces, so every mark has to work on both. Ink replaces the cream stroke; the flame stays exactly as it is.
Wordmark lockup
Mark A with the name set in Fraunces at SOFT 80, WONK 1, the display face from the Lantern spec. One accent word, as the system requires.
Lightkeepers
Lightkeepers
Horizontal for the app header and favicon, stacked for print, the document pack and anything square. The accent falls on keepers rather than light, because the parent is the keeper and that is who buys it.
Lighting the keepers
The idea being: the lantern does not just sit beside the name, it lights part of it. Four ways of doing that, all live rather than pictures.
One physical problem worth naming. The mark sits on the left, so its light would naturally fall on Light first, not on keepers. Each of these solves that differently: hang the lantern over the word, drop the beam from above, or stop drawing the beam at all and just let the letters glow.
Lightkeepers
Hung overhead. The lantern hangs directly above and the cone falls onto the word. The most literal reading of the idea, and the most poetic. Costs vertical space, so it suits a splash or a hero rather than a header.
Lightkeepers
The word glows. No beam drawn at all. The letters simply carry light. Cleanest, scales down best, and works in a header at any size.
Lightkeepers
Pool of light. A warm pool gathers under the lit half, as though light has settled on the surface. The most restrained.
Lightkeepers
Side beam. The beam crosses from the mark and lands on the word. Most explicit about where the light comes from, but it washes over Light on the way past.
On the brand rules. The Lantern spec bans gradients as decoration, and these are gradients. They are allowed because the spec carves out one exception: a glow that carries focus is not decoration. Light is the brand idea, so light is permitted to behave like light. If it were shading a button, it would not be.
The AI round
Ten concepts through Recraft V4.1 in vector mode with the Lantern palette locked. It returns real SVG, not raster, so anything here is usable rather than just reference. These are the five worth keeping.
House lantern, arched windowClosest to direction A, arrived at independently.
House with a flared lantern bodyThe best idea in the batch. The flare makes the house read as a lamp, and it beats my flat rectangle.
Lantern with a star insideStrongest silhouette of the set. Confident at any size.
Flame with a figure in negative spaceThe concept I abandoned, executed more cleanly than my attempt.
House lantern, round windowCharming, but the circular opening reads as a birdhouse.
House lantern on legsOverworked. The legs and hanging loop push it towards a robot or a birdhouse.
Flame in a circleReads as a keyhole. The cream blob fights the flame.
Candle with arcsThe wifi problem. Arcs beside a vertical object always read as signal.
Tower with arcsWorse. This is a mobile phone tower.
Figure with a starAmbiguous. Reads as a person with a star in their stomach.
One result worth knowing. I asked for a lighthouse with arcs of light, and both AI attempts came back reading as a wifi router, which is exactly what my own hand-drawn version did. When two independent approaches land on the same wrong association, the concept is the problem, not the execution. That one is dead.
What I cut, and why
The Beacon. A lighthouse tower with concentric arcs of light. It reads as a wifi symbol or a cell tower at every size I tried, and adding a gallery rail made it worse by turning the tower into a lattice mast. Confirmed independently by the AI round.
Two Keepers. A tall flame and a small flame side by side, for the parent and the child. Conceptually the best idea in the whole set and it fits the plural in the name. But a flame drawn simply enough to work at 24px is a teardrop, and a teardrop is water. Four attempts, including adding an inner tongue and a leaning tip, and it still read as two droplets. Worth revisiting with a proper illustrator; not worth shipping as a concept.
Where I would take this
A, Hearthlight, is the one I would develop. It is the only mark in the set that encodes home and light in a single shape rather than placing one next to the other, it survives to 24px, and it works on both surfaces without modification.
C, The Window, is the one I would keep alive as the alternative. It is quieter and more adult, and it matches the emotional register the research pointed at more precisely than anything else here. If Lightkeepers wants to look like a serious thing for anxious parents rather than a children's brand, C is the braver choice.
The AI round earned its place on one specific idea: the flared lantern body in the second concept. Letting the house silhouette flare outward like a lamp housing is better than my flat rectangle, and it is worth folding into A.