Export Ladder wordmark PNG for Clerk email templates (light-bg variant)

[ChesterSchendel]

Context

Clerk Application Settings → Branding → Logo controls the logo that appears on Clerk-hosted pages and in Clerk-sent transactional emails (invitations, verification codes). It's a separate upload from the Google OAuth consent screen logo.

The Google consent screen uses our green-arrow-on-dark mark (good for that surface). Email clients (Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.) handle dark backgrounds poorly — they auto-invert or apply weird color filters — so the email logo needs to be designed for a light/white background: the Ladder wordmark in dark text (matching how it renders at the top of the app via src/components/LadderLogo.tsx).

What to produce

• Ladder wordmark PNG, dark text (probably #1A1A1A or near-black), transparent background.
• Sized roughly 400px wide. Email-friendly.
• Mirrors the in-app top-nav wordmark.

Upload location

Clerk Dashboard → Production → Ladder → Application → Settings → Branding → Logo → Upload image.

(While we're there, optionally also upload a favicon for accounts.runladder.com — square 32x32 PNG/ICO. Low priority.)

Priority

Polish; not blocking auth functionality. Invitations and verification emails currently use Clerk's default header with our {{app_name}} resolving to "Ladder", which carries most of the brand weight even without the logo.

[ChesterSchendel]

Update from prod Clerk email template review (2026-05-28)

After uploading the wordmark logo (92px @ 2x = 184px source), Clerk's templates rendered inconsistently:

Invitation template (Updated almost 2y ago per the dashboard list): doesn't pull in the uploaded logo at all. Shows "Ladder" as styled text instead. The template predates the {{> app_logo}} partial. "Reset to default" is disabled, suggesting the current template IS our default, just with an outdated structure. Fix: manually edit the template HTML in Clerk dashboard to inject either the partial or a raw <img> tag at the top of the body.

Verification code template: pulls in the logo correctly via {{> app_logo}}, but the <img> has no width/max-width constraint, so it renders at the source's intrinsic 184px instead of the intended 92px display. Fix: either edit the template HTML to add width="92" to the img tag, or re-upload a 92px-wide PNG (loses retina crispness, but easier).

Recommend handling both as one editing pass when this ticket gets picked up — go into each template, get the HTML right, save. Should be ~20 minutes of fiddling in the dashboard.