Choose the symbols first
Two or three, no more. A trade tool, an animal, a plant, a landmark. Crowded shields lose their legibility at exactly the size a crest is usually seen.
Words in · Finished crest out · Classic or minimal
Lions, oaks, anchors, hammers, a colour that runs in the family — described in a sentence, drawn as a shield. Free to start, no design software.
Both were generated on the model this page uses, from a written description alone. Every output is AI-generated, so your result varies with your wording — treat these as a guide to what the tool does, not a fixed result you will get back exactly.

A quartered shield in burgundy and gold with a rampant lion and wheat sheaves, a barred helm, a stag crest on the torse, blue-and-gold mantling and an empty motto scroll ready for your words.

The same instinct reduced to one deep-teal line: a simple shield, a geometric oak, two stars and a laurel arc — small enough to emboss, plain enough to print in a single colour.
It turns a written description — the animals, objects, colours and shield layout you want — into a finished family crest, in either a traditional heraldic style or a modern minimal one.
Heraldry has a grammar. A shield can be divided per pale, per fess or quarterly; the tinctures are a small fixed palette of golds, silvers, reds, blues, greens and blacks; charges sit on the field in defined positions; above the shield go the helm, the twisted torse and the crest, with mantling spilling out behind.
That structure is why real arms read as arms at a glance and why an assembled pile of clip art never does. The generator is trained on enough of that visual tradition to keep the arrangement plausible while letting you choose what goes in it.
Worth being straight about what this is: it designs a crest, it does not research one. Nobody can look up the arms that belong to your surname, because in most heraldic traditions arms were granted to a person, not to a family name — the "your surname's coat of arms" sold in gift shops is decoration with a name attached.
What you get here is a family crest you designed on purpose, out of symbols you can explain, which is closer to how arms were originally made than any database lookup. It runs on the Nano Banana 2 model in the browser with free credits to start, and each variation is its own generation.
Creative engine
Write the symbols, colours and style you want, and the estimate updates before you generate.
Antique hand-inked heraldry with mantling and helm, or a flat two-colour emblem that survives being shrunk onto a business card.
Trade tools, animals, plants, county colours and a motto scroll — assembled into one shield rather than pulled from a stock library.
Designing rather than editing? Invent a creature from scratch in the fakemon generator, or reduce a real photo to a clean graphic shape with photo to silhouette.
From a list of things that matter to your family to a finished shield.
Two or three, no more. A trade tool, an animal, a plant, a landmark. Crowded shields lose their legibility at exactly the size a crest is usually seen.
Deep red and gold, quartered. Navy and silver, split down the middle. Say whether you want the helm, mantling and motto scroll above and below, or just the shield.
Ask for antique hand-inked heraldry on parchment, or a flat two-colour vector emblem. Run both — they suit different uses, and a failed run is never charged.
Weddings, reunions, small businesses, tabletop campaigns and the front of a family recipe book.
Two families joining is the oldest reason to quarter a shield. It lands well on stationery, a seating chart, a wax seal or the cover of an order of service.
A butcher, a distillery, a joinery — trades where a crest reads as heritage rather than as decoration. The minimal register is the one that survives being embossed small.
Noble houses, guilds and factions need arms that look like they have rules behind them, and a party remembers a house by its shield far better than by its name.
A designed family crest with an explanation of each symbol is a better present than a shop's surname lookup, because every element in it was chosen for a reason you can tell.
Bookplates, a maker's stamp, a signature block, the corner of a letterhead — the places where a small drawn mark does more work than a logotype would.
Common questions about designing a coat of arms on Kavel.
No, and nothing else honestly can. In most European traditions arms belonged to an individual and their direct descendants, not to everyone who shares a surname, so a "surname coat of arms" is a commercial product rather than a record. This designs a new one from symbols you choose, which you can then explain to anybody who asks.
Start from things that are specific: a trade someone in the family worked, an animal already attached to the family in stories, a plant or landmark from where people are from, and two colours you would happily see on a wall. Two or three charges maximum — heraldry reads at a distance, and clutter is what kills it.
Short mottos in plain lettering often come out clean, but text is the least reliable part of any image model, so treat a legible scroll as a bonus rather than the plan. The demos here deliberately leave the ribbon blank; adding the words afterwards in any editor gives you crisp type every time.
The minimal two-colour mark, almost always. Antique heraldry carries a lot of fine linework that fills in at small sizes or under embossing, while a flat emblem holds up on a wax seal, a stamp, an engraved glass or a single-colour print.
Yes, and it usually looks better than people expect — a soldering iron, a fishing boat, a stethoscope or a bicycle placed with heraldic framing reads as a genuine mark rather than as a joke. Say the object plainly and keep the surrounding structure traditional.
Keep your description word for word and change one thing at a time: the layout, the tincture pair, or the register. Rewriting the whole prompt gives you a different crest; changing one clause gives you the same crest seen another way, which is what you want when comparing.
The estimate is shown before you run it and moves with the resolution and format you pick. A failed run is never charged, and a new account starts with free balance, so you can see both registers of your idea before deciding whether to keep refining.
Check the terms for the current position on outputs before putting one on packaging or signage. Also worth knowing: in a few countries granted arms are legally protected, so a design that closely copies an existing family's arms is the one thing to steer around when choosing symbols.
One credit pool covers Nano Banana images and Seedance and Veo video. The cost shows before every run, and failed jobs are not charged. Use a subscription for ongoing work, or a one-time pack when you just need to top up.
What's included
Secure checkout by Stripe. Card details never touch our servers.
What's included
Secure checkout by Stripe. Card details never touch our servers.
What's included
Secure checkout by Stripe. Card details never touch our servers.
What's included
Secure checkout by Stripe. Card details never touch our servers.
One-time top-ups — buy extra credits any time you run low.
What's included
Secure checkout by Stripe. Card details never touch our servers.
What's included
Secure checkout by Stripe. Card details never touch our servers.
What's included
Secure checkout by Stripe. Card details never touch our servers.
Charges appear as “KAVEL AI” on your card statement. You can cancel any time from Settings → Billing; cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you already paid for.
Powered by
Use one balance across every supported image and video model — eleven of them today, listed below — and check the credit cost before each request.
Video models
Image models
Model credit guide
You're only charged for successful generations. The exact estimate in the generator varies by model, length, resolution, audio, and number of images.
| Type | Model | Credit cost |
|---|---|---|
| Video | Seedance 2.5 | The long-take tier, priced per second: 5s 480p ≈ 211 credits, 5s 720p ≈ 473. A full 30s take runs ≈ 1,260 at 480p and ≈ 2,835 at 720p. Supplying a reference clip lowers the per-second rate. |
| Video | Seedance 2.0 | 5s 720p image-to-video ≈ 188 credits; text-to-video ≈ 308 credits. Scales with resolution and length. |
| Video | Seedance 2 Fast | Faster and lower cost. 5s 720p text-to-video ≈ 248 credits. |
| Video | Seedance 2 Mini | The cheapest Seedance tier. 5s 720p ≈ 154 credits, 5s 480p ≈ 72 credits. |
| Video | Seedance 1.5 Pro | Audio doubles the rate. 5s 720p ≈ 27 credits silent, ≈ 53 with audio; 1080p ≈ 57 and ≈ 113. |
| Video | Veo 3.1 | Billed per video, not per second (Lite tier). About 45 credits at 720p and 53 at 1080p. |
| Video | Kling 3.0 | Audio raises the rate. 5s 720p ≈ 105 credits silent, ≈ 150 with audio; 1080p ≈ 135 and ≈ 203. |
| Video | MiniMax H3 | Fixed 2K, no resolution ladder. Priced per second — a 5s clip ≈ 158 credits. |
| Image | Nano Banana 2 | Generate or edit from text and images. About 8 credits per 1K image, 12 at 2K, 18 at 4K. |
| Image | Nano Banana Pro | Consistent run times across generations. About 12 credits per 1K or 2K image, 21 at 4K. |
| Image | Nano Banana 2 Lite | Faster, simpler variant. A flat 8 credits per image at every resolution. Start here to test. |
| Image | GPT Image 2 | The lowest-cost image model here. About 3 credits per 1K image, 6 at 2K, 12 at 4K. |
| Image | Seedream 5.0 Lite | Flat pricing — about 8 credits per image whether you generate or edit. |
Two or three symbols, two colours and a sentence — antique heraldry or a clean modern mark, both in the time it takes to describe them.