Licenses

Updated October 25, 2026

This page covers every sign builder in the Build-Signs.work network: Road-Signs.work, Trail-Signs.work, Park-Signs.work, Airport-Signs.work, Safety-Signs.work, Railroad-Signs.work, ADA-Signs.work, Boating-Signs.work and DOT-Signs.work. Each site has a short “License & reuse” page that links here. This is general information, not legal advice.

Sign images: public domain

Every sign image the builders generate, as SVG or PNG, is marked with the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0. You may use, copy, modify, print, sell and redistribute them for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without asking and without attribution. A link back to the builder is appreciated, never required.

Why they’re public domain: the designs come from U.S. federal standards (the MUTCD and the FHWA Standard Highway Signs book, FAA advisory circulars, OSHA rules, the ADA Standards, Coast Guard and DOT regulations). Works of the U.S. Government have no copyright (17 U.S.C. §105). The builders draw those designs with code, using only public-domain fonts and artwork (listed below). Some content was written or drawn with AI help, such as humor-sign text and the parody badges. Under current U.S. Copyright Office guidance, material made by AI without enough human authorship can’t be copyrighted.

The Public Domain Mark is a label, not a legal waiver. It says we know of no copyright in these images. To the extent any rights in them exist anywhere, we claim none and won’t enforce any.

What the public domain mark doesn’t cover

• Your own text. Words you type onto a sign are yours, and we don’t claim them. If you type someone else’s words, their rights still apply.
• Trademarks and names. Copyright and trademark are different things. A brand, business or product name on a sign is still that owner’s trademark.
• Official insignia and logotypes. Federal law restricts using government insignia, and making a sign look like it came from an agency, whatever its copyright status. See logotypes and parody badges.
• Real-world installation. A sign on a public road, airfield or workplace must meet its governing standard and be approved by the authority responsible. See the Terms of Service.

Logotypes and parody badges (Trail-Signs.work, Park-Signs.work)

By default, some Trail-Signs.work builders draw “National Forest”, “National Grassland”, “National Recreation Area”, “National Monument” and WILDERNESS in the USDA Forest Service’s own national standard logotypes, from figure 1-2 of its Sign and Poster Guidelines (EM-7100-15). As U.S. Government artwork they have no copyright. The Forest Service reserves them for its own signs, though, and these sites aren’t affiliated with or endorsed by it. If your sign isn’t an actual Forest Service sign, switch the builder’s lettering to the public-domain font (one click beside the sign). Images that use the logotypes say so in their embedded metadata.

The sites never draw the Forest Service shield, the National Park Service arrowhead (a registered Department of the Interior mark) or any other agency insignia. The “Humor Service” and “National Prank Service” badges on Trail-Signs.work and Park-Signs.work are original parodies for funny signs only. Don’t use them to suggest a connection to any agency.

Fonts

The builders convert lettering to plain vector shapes, so no font file is ever embedded in a sign image. Font licenses cover the font software, not the images made with it.

• FHWA Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs (“Highway Gothic”, Series B and D, 2000 revision): the letterforms are a U.S. Government work and public domain. The digital font files the builders use came from a third party, and their exact source is still being confirmed.
• Tuffy (Thatcher Ulrich, Karoly Barta, Michael Everson): public domain. License text.
• Sloe Gin Rickey and Uchiyama (Ray Larabie, Typodermic Fonts): CC0 1.0. Sloe Gin Rickey, Uchiyama.
• Noto Sans CJK (Japanese, Korean and Chinese lettering on Safety-Signs.work only): SIL Open Font License 1.1, which says outright that documents made with the font aren’t covered by it. License text.

Pictographs and artwork

• FHWA Standard Highway Signs vector artwork and MUTCD drawings: U.S. Government works, public domain.
• Wikimedia Commons MUTCD sign drawings (several warning-sign pictographs): public domain.
• Workplace-rule pictograms on Safety-Signs.work: Wikimedia Commons (public domain or CC0), Openclipart (CC0) and the Pinhead map icons (CC0). Pinhead license.
• Everything else is drawn by the builders’ own code from government standards.

PNG and SVG

PNG (ISO/IEC 15948) and SVG (a W3C Recommendation) are open, royalty-free formats. There’s nothing to license to open, edit, print or share them.

What’s inside each file

Every downloaded PNG carries an XMP metadata block, and every SVG from the sign service carries the same data in its <metadata> element, plus a short comment. The data records:

• the Public Domain Mark and a link to this page;
• the generator: the Build-Signs.work sign generator, credited to the site that builds the sign;
• a link to build the same sign again.

That way anyone who finds the file can tell where it came from. Removing or keeping that metadata is up to you.

Source code: BSD 3-Clause, not public domain

The public domain mark covers the sign images only. The software behind the sites and the sign service is copyrighted and licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License. The open-source packages the software uses keep their own licenses.

Built with AI

These sites were built with the help of Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. See Built with AI in the Terms of Service.