You need a signature image more often than you might think: at the bottom of an invoice, in an email footer, on a cover letter, a proposal, a certificate, a thank-you card for customers, a product insert, or to sign a PDF form you received by email. Printing, signing, scanning and cleaning up the scan takes ten minutes and usually leaves a gray smudge around the ink. A clean digital signature with a transparent background takes one minute.
This generator gives you two ways to make one. Type your name and pick a handwriting style, or draw your own signature with a mouse, a finger or a stylus. Either way you get a tightly cropped PNG with a transparent background, or a vector SVG. Nothing you type or draw is uploaded or stored.
How to create your signature
Type it
- Type your name in the Your name box. Each style card updates as you type.
- Click the handwriting style you like. Twelve styles are available, from flowing scripts like Great Vibes and Allura to casual hands like Homemade Apple and La Belle Aurore.
- Adjust Slant (minus 20 to plus 20 degrees) to lean the letters, and Weight to make the strokes thicker.
- Pick the Ink color.
Draw it
- Click Draw it.
- Sign on the white pad above the dotted line with your mouse, finger or stylus. Faster strokes are drawn thinner and slower strokes thicker, like a real pen. A stylus that reports pressure, such as an Apple Pencil, uses that pressure instead.
- Set the Pen thickness before you sign. Use Undo stroke to remove the last stroke, or Clear to start again.
- Pick the Ink color. Changing it recolors what you already drew.
Save it
- Check the preview under the controls. It shows the exact image you will download, cropped tightly around the signature.
- Choose the PNG width: 400 pixels for email, 800 for documents, 1600 for print.
- Choose the PNG background: Transparent for placing on documents, White for places that do not handle transparency.
- Click Download PNG, Download SVG, or Copy image to paste it straight into a document or email.
The 12 handwriting styles
| Style | Character | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Dancing Script | Lively, rounded, easy to read | Everyday documents, emails |
| Great Vibes | Formal, elegant capitals | Certificates, invitations |
| Sacramento | Thin, flowing, monoline | Minimal email signatures |
| Allura | Classic copperplate script | Formal letters |
| Alex Brush | Brush script with contrast | Creative and design work |
| Mr Dafoe | Bold, fast, confident | Artist and brand signatures |
| Herr Von Muellerhoff | Tall, slanted, quick hand | A realistic signed look |
| Homemade Apple | Casual handwriting | Thank-you notes, informal sign-offs |
| Cedarville Cursive | Light, school-style cursive | Friendly, personal notes |
| La Belle Aurore | Loose, natural handwriting | Realistic everyday signatures |
| Yellowtail | Retro, bold script | Logos and product inserts |
| Satisfy | Smooth brush script | Packaging and cards |
All twelve are open source fonts released under the SIL Open Font License or the Apache License 2.0, so the signature images you make can be used in personal and commercial work. The fonts are served from this site, so your name is not sent to any outside font service.
Typed or drawn: which is better?
A typed signature is neat, consistent and quick, and it looks good at any size. It is clearly a font, though, and anyone who types the same name in the same style gets the same image. A drawn signature is unique to you and looks like your real handwriting, with natural variation in the strokes. It takes a few tries to get one you like, especially with a mouse.
Many people keep both: a typed version for quick everyday use and a drawn version for documents where a personal touch matters. Making both here takes a couple of minutes.
Tips for drawing a good signature:
- Use a finger on a phone or tablet, or a stylus if you have one. A mouse works, but a trackpad is hard.
- Sign larger than you would on paper. The pad is wide for a reason, and the image is cropped and scaled afterwards anyway.
- Sign at a steady, natural speed. Very slow strokes become wobbly; very fast strokes become thin.
- Try it three or four times and keep the best one. Clear is instant.
Ink color
Four ink colors are one click away, plus a custom color picker:
- Black is the safe default for documents, invoices and anything that might be printed or photocopied.
- Blue ink imitates a ballpoint pen. Many people sign originals in blue so they stand out from black printed text and from photocopies, and a blue signature image gives documents the same familiar look.
- Dark navy is a quieter blue that looks good in email footers next to dark gray text.
- Dark green and custom colors suit brand uses, such as a signature on a product insert in your brand color.
Keep contrast in mind: light colors look faint on white paper and disappear when printed in black and white.
Getting close to your real signature
If you want the image to resemble how you actually sign, start by drawing it. If the drawn version never looks right with a mouse, try this:
- Type your name exactly the way you sign: many people sign with an initial and a surname, such as "A. Morgan", or with a first name only.
- Compare the styles with your handwriting. Upright, rounded hands match Dancing Script or Homemade Apple; fast, slanted hands match Herr Von Muellerhoff or Mr Dafoe; formal loops match Great Vibes or Allura.
- Use Slant to match the angle of your handwriting and Weight to match your pen.
A typed style will never be identical to your handwriting, and for official documents that is fine: what makes a signature valid is your intent to sign, not how artistic it looks.
Which file to use
| Use | Download | Settings |
|---|---|---|
| Email signature in Gmail or Outlook | PNG | 400 px wide, transparent or white |
| Word or Google Docs letter | PNG or Copy image | 800 px wide, transparent |
| Signing a PDF form | PNG | 800 px, transparent, then place it with a PDF editor |
| Invoices and quotes | PNG | 800 px, transparent |
| Print, embroidery, engraving, logo designs | SVG | Vector, scales to any size |
| Website or online store footer | SVG or PNG | SVG stays sharp on every screen |
The PNG is cropped tightly around the ink with a small margin, so it lines up neatly next to text. Transparent PNGs let the paper or page color show through, which looks far more natural than a white rectangle. Some older programs show transparency as black; choose White for those.
The SVG is real vector artwork. For typed names, the letters are converted to outline paths, so the SVG does not need the font installed and opens correctly in Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, Canva or a cutting machine's software. For drawn signatures, every stroke is saved as a smooth curve with its own width. Slant and weight are included in the SVG.
Is a signature image legally valid?
This is the question that matters most, so here is a plain answer. It is general information, not legal advice.
In the United States, the federal ESIGN Act (2000) and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, which 49 states, Washington D.C. and several territories have adopted (New York has its own similar law), say that a signature cannot be denied legal effect just because it is electronic. Under ESIGN, an electronic signature is any electronic sound, symbol or process attached to a record and adopted by a person with the intent to sign. A typed name or a pasted signature image can qualify, when the parties agreed to do business electronically and the signer clearly intended to sign. Some documents are excluded, such as wills and many family law documents, and some notices must still be on paper.
The weakness of a signature image is proof. Anyone can paste a picture of a signature, so on its own it shows nothing about who actually signed or when. That is why it is not a certified or verified e-signature. Dedicated e-signature services add what an image cannot: identity checks, a record of consent, timestamps, and a tamper-evident seal on the final document. In the European Union, the eIDAS regulation goes further: only a qualified electronic signature, created with a certified device and a qualified certificate, has the same legal effect as a handwritten one everywhere in the EU.
Warning: use your signature image for documents you are entitled to sign, and keep the file private, like you would your pen and checkbook. Never create or use a signature that is not yours.
For everyday uses, such as invoices, letters, internal approvals, email sign-offs and forms that ask for a signature image, a clean PNG from this tool is exactly what you need. For contracts, leases, loans and anything that may be challenged, use an e-signature service that records who signed. To place your signature on a PDF you received, use the Sign PDF tool, which also lets you type or draw a signature directly on the page.
Adding it to your email or documents
- Gmail: open Settings, See all settings, General, Signature, create or edit a signature and use the image button to insert the PNG. Gmail needs the image hosted online, for example in Google Drive, so upload it there first.
- Word and Google Docs: use Insert, then Picture or Image, and pick the PNG. Set text wrapping to "In front of text" to place it over a signature line.
- Branded email footers: build a full footer with logo, links and contact details using the email signature generator, and add your handwritten signature image above it.
- Invoices: the invoice generator creates a printable invoice; add the signature PNG to the final PDF with the Sign PDF tool.
Signature ideas for small businesses
- Thank-you cards and packing inserts: a handwritten-style signature from the founder makes a printed card feel personal. Use the SVG or a 1600 pixel PNG so it prints sharp.
- Certificates and gift vouchers: a formal script such as Great Vibes or Allura in black or navy.
- Artwork and prints: sign digital art with a drawn signature, placed in a corner with the watermark maker at full opacity for a whole series at once.
- Quotes, proposals and cover letters: a signature above your typed name looks finished and personal, especially in PDFs sent to new clients.
- Website "about" pages: the founder's signature under a short story, saved as SVG so it stays crisp on every screen.
Troubleshooting
- The styles show a plain font: the handwriting fonts are still loading or could not load. Wait a moment or refresh the page.
- Accented letters look different: the fonts cover English and Western European letters such as é, ñ and ü. Letters outside that set fall back to a standard font.
- Copy image does nothing: some browsers block copying images to the clipboard. Use Download PNG instead.
- The drawn line is jagged: sign more slowly and larger, or use a finger or stylus instead of a trackpad.
- The signature looks too thin in a document: raise Weight for typed names or Pen thickness for drawn ones, and export at 800 or 1600 pixels.
Privacy
Your name and your drawing stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, saved on a server or remembered after you leave the page. That matters for something as personal as a signature: the only copies are the files you download.