Artist Mike Mitchell has created a symbol of protest against US president Donald Trump, which features the number 45 turned on its side to resemble a swastika.

The American artist came up with the symbol back in February to use at protests against Trump's inauguration. It has since been adopted more widely on social media.

The design features the number 45 in reference to Trump being the 45th US president. This has been turned 45 degrees to the left and overlaid with a stop symbol, and is intended to recall anti-Nazi imagery that sees the swastika covered in the same way.

"I was trying to come up with some protest paraphernalia and this was part of that," Mitchell told Dezeen. "It came about pretty organically, playing with the number 45 and leading to the not unfamiliar anti-Nazi imagery we've all seen."

Mitchell's design is similar to that of American industrial designer Tucker Viemeister, who also designed a logo for Donald Trump that was based on Nazi insignia.

Both designers attribute their use of Nazi symbolism to the president's views on race and social inclusion, which have been making headlines recently following a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that left one person dead and many injured.

In the aftermath of the rally, Trump was criticised for failing to condemn neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) groups. He instead blamed "many sides" for the violence, which culminated in the death of civil-rights activist Heather Heyer when a motorist associated with the white-supremacist groups drove a car into the counter-protest.

In response to this, Trump's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities quit en masse – releasing an open letter that called upon the president to resign.

"Supremacy, discrimination and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American Values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too," the letter reads.

Mitchell – who is based in Austin, Texas – described Trump as the "antithesis" of art, but believed he wouldn't cause long-term damage to the country's creative industry.

"I think his presence gives strength to creatives and highlights the need for them," the artist said. "At the moment, he hasn't managed to make any progress towards suppressing free speech, and as long as that continues, I think most creative industries will come out of this administration on top."

"It's a shame that he's incapable of recognising the importance of art beyond paintings of his goofy ass, but I don't think he's capable of any long lasting damage beyond cutting funding for arts programmes, which is sad, but expected. When he's gone, it'll be brought back."

Trump's rise from real-estate mogul to Republican candidate and eventual president of the United States has prompted a constant stream of responses from designers and architects, including an IKEA version of his proposed Mexican border wall and an adaptation of the iconic Hope poster associated with Obama.