Show HN: LogoFox – fast logo maker
logofox.co
logofox.co
Don't take this as negative feedback, but as a tip to re-think the legal side approach. Better would be that you
(a) you do some copyright checks and your terms state what checks have been done; and (b) once someone pays for the logo, they own the IP rights in the logo.
[1] "Third Party Design Resources – You may use purchased End Products outside of the Site, whether for commercial or personal purposes. Prior to creating and using any End Product, LogoFox highly recommends you to perform due diligence to determine that the use of the Design Resources is free of any adverse claims and is not subject to any third party rights. LogoFox may also use symbols provided by The Noun Project, a third party content provider that obtains the symbols from other third party contributors. All use of these Symbols is AT YOUR OWN RISK. "
A logo? Remove the automatic part and focus just on the deliverable; whether it's made by a computer or by a human, what you get is a few concepts before you select the one you like. And then you go with a lawyer to protect your IP.
Unless I'm missing it in the terms, the user isn't even clearly allowed to use their designs as the basis of a known-safe design, since they don't explicitly permit changes to it?
When talking about the finished logo, they talk about "End Products".
They define "Design Resources" as
Throughout the process LogoFox will also make use of certain symbols, colors, fonts and other design elements (collectively known as "Design Resources”) [...]
and then state
d. Third Party Design Resources
[...] All use of these Symbols is AT YOUR OWN RISK. You shall abide by all copyright notices, trademark rules, and shall not use, copy, reproduce, modify, translate, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, upload, display, license, sub-license, rent, lend, assign, gift, sell or otherwise transfer or distribute for any purposes whatsoever any portion of the Design Resources not owned by you: (i) without the express prior written consent of the respective owners or (ii) in any way that violates any third party right.
You acknowledge that some fonts and symbols used during the Design Process might have been licensed from a third party provider. Under no circumstances will LogoFox be liable in any way for any Design Resources, including, but not limited to, for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Materials or any part thereof.
Delivering a design where you can't even tell the customer about the license of the fonts you used is... weak. If you want to offer cheap designs, use open fonts or clearly tell the customer where they can get their own license, don't just let them figure it out themselves.
Which makes this way more expensive than a normal logo created by an actual artist.
If I contract someone to make me a logo, I can normally safely assume there won’t be lingering IP issues after I have the deliverable.
This clause is not about copyright on the logo itself. It's about trademark law and all the difficulties therein.
I understand your concern about copyright. In copyright, the source of the image is what matters, not its appearance: If you created your own logo that happens to be similar to an existing logo, but did not actually copy the existing item (and could prove that), you'd be fine. If you did copy it, and made significant changes until it didn't look confusingly like the original, you'd be guilty. But this isn't the problem that "perform due diligence to determine that the use of the Design Resources is free of any adverse claims and is not subject to any third party rights" is warning you about.
Trademark law is different than copyright law. If you create a brand new logo that, unfortunately, happens to look by random chance similar to another logo that already exists in your market but you didn't know about, that's an IP issue. You need to search out and differentiate your logo from all conflicting logos that already exist.
This search is why no artist or automatic logo generator could guarantee that you're able to use the outputs.
It is literally impossible to vet an idea / logo / website name, before you even have it.
First you design, then you apply for protection.
How though? For example, this is one of the things I got when I typed apple: https://d30y9cdsu7xlg0.cloudfront.net/png/620675-200.png imgur at https://i.imgur.com/RmnqgG2.png
How does anyone know if you have the legal right to use this? I guess you could litigate over it and have a judge rule that you own it? What I am trying to say is that the straight forward way to legal protection is to include lawyer fees in whatever you charge customers. You can either make your product more expensive or you can try make things work for a lot more people. I don't think you can do both (once again I would love to be proven wrong).
Edit: it seems to be talking about copyright. I retract my comment. I think if you pay money, you should definitely have a full copyright license to do everything you need to do with a logo that identifies your business.
1) Pretty sure that branding is taken
2) Let's say I was ignorant of the bed sheet brigade, it would be pretty bad to get a logo that's culturally flawed.
If the client only wants to pay $29 or even $990, that barely covers a meeting and a few sketches.
I will make it straight and simple.
1) We use third-party icons from The Noun Project. We use their Pro API which gave us the right to use and sell the icons in part of the logos. Those icons are from thousand designers around the world. Normally when a designer uploads an icon on The Noun Project, they gave their IP. But, how can we be sure the icon uploaded is really their own creation? We can't.
2) We use hundreds of fonts. We check the license for all of them. But even with that, there is still a small risk of license infringement.
3) Thousand of logos are created every hour on LogoFox. Some will probably look similar to existing logos out there. For obvious reasons, we can't personally take the liability for the logo generated on the site. You have to make your due diligence.
Those 3 reasons mainly explain our current terms. This allows us to protect ourselves from any liability problems that may occur. Those liabilities also exist with a logo designed by a logo designer. The difference is, we don't deal with one logo a week but with thousand. So we adapted our terms accordingly. I hope you understand.
TLDR: no matter if your logo comes from a logo maker or a designer. You have to make your due diligence.
This tool is not useful for generating a great logo, yet. But it does produce a bunch of random ideas that might allow a human to come up with an awesome idea.
For example I worked with a designer I found on craiglist for my logo for Remarkbox (https://www.remarkbox.com)
Her versions were everything up to the purple version: http://www.foxhop.net/remarkbox-logo
I was very happy with her work and help coming up with the idea, I paid her in full and ended up creating my own version which is the one I'm using today.
I think this sort of program could be marketed to real designers to help them get the creative juices flowing.
LogoFox is a very cool idea, basically hot or not or tinder of design, something I was talking to the founders of hatchwise about.
https://writingexplained.org/more-than-or-more-then-differen... if of any interest
[1]: https://logojoy.com/
OP is a lot better.
I preferred the design process at LogoJoy though, especially the choice of colors and explaining what the colors often mean.
I've used it before for some ideas. I just remove the overlay using Chrome's developer tools so I can see the logos clearly.
I would also love to recommend http://logodust.com, for open sourced logo designs made by a design agency [1] that you can download and use for free.
Also need some way of downloading them without giving the email. It is not clear whether giving my email is going to let me download them or just get back to where I was, where I need to buy them.
Finally the logos seem quite basic for a premium service. I could knock those up in Inkscape for free.
$30 for a computer generated logo. $990 for a professionally designed logo.
I'm pretty sure you can get a computer generated logo for free from a variety of services, and professional logos for much less than $990.
The UX on the site isn't great, so I wouldn't really pay for a premium service.
They're horrible and only $5
Or it's an error.
What's your point? You can also get professional logos for $100,000. Logofox has valued their professional design at $990, it's subjective whether you think that is high or low.
I tried to figure that out via the chat, but the developer said he is "not sure".
What does that mean? Isn't everybody who sells physical or digital goods required to provide a valid invoice?
My major annoyance is "trapping" the back button so I can't go back.
On the experience I had a few ideas: after selecting the icons, there's no «next», just «close» button, which sounds like I will lose my progress. And I get you're generating the logos on the fly, but don't let me see a brief moment of "error creating your logo". At least wait a few seconds before showing it.
I feel like you'd be better off emphasizing ease of use for non-designers or something.
As impressive as the AI music that sounds like Chopin is, I would love to see what can be done with a logo, especially if some copy about the company and product were also provided as input.
I would really like a way to go back, so I could actually download, or screenshot my favorite.
1. Back button/link as well to go back and compare 2. Facility to short list icons and compare later to decide final version
I selected icon only, picked an icon, clicked close, and it showed me a bunch of text only logos with no icon. I went back, picked a shape, clicked close, and the loading screen just kept loading.
I saw that this link was second, checked it out and was baffled.
I'm glad this is the first comment, I almost got scared people were praising the service.
I agree with everything you said.
A crappy logo is 100 times worse than no logo.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3620/3321936091_04ff285b5e_o....
I don't know why we have to always take the most improbable one-in-a-time cases like Facebook, Amazon, and other huge corporations and compared them with regular folks (whom are the ones who would use this tool).
In this case, what does that prove?
For more serious projects, you should probably go with a trusted designer recommended from your personal network, where a logo is part of a complete brand package.
Step above that would be the "gig economy" marketplace style sites for generic logo creation. Be wary here though, many people spam these with knock-offs or direct copies of existing logos & resell content. Basically make sure to image search anything you get. From a pragmatic standpoint you can get something pretty good out of these for the short term before rebranding down the road.
For finding serious custom branding services you can look through a number of creative sites for talent. Creative job boards like Cloroflot (www.coroflot.com/design-jobs), Behance (www.behance.net/joblist) or Dribbble (dribbble.com/jobs) can fit the bill here. You can also search portfolios at these sites and directly reach out to designers that match your style.
For a logo to be effective, it has to communicate an intent/personality/style according to what the brand is about. And the probabilty that an app achieves that is based on pure luck.
I get that generic logos may look "nice", but a logo is not about that.
This site demonstrates a fundamental understanding of what logos are for and how they are used in today's internet.
It's a generic logo maker. That should be an oxymoron, but it's not. It's LogoFox!
It's not, because of the abundance of generic web sites, generic blogs, generic businesses, and even generic brands, that just need a generic logo.
For what you claim to be true, the client must have a brand identity first. And those that do, know themselves. They will have input a professional could use for a logo that reflects that identity. They will look at a tool like LogoFox and say no.
Except, there are two traps here immediately in the path of your advice.
1. Who is this "professional". Agency, free lancer, artist friend, or local small business that also does logo design?
2. Most "professionals" serve their clients "gut" anyway. And many business brands are based on the tastes of the owners, which they have every right to impose on their customers and any professionals they hire to put into vector format, even to no benefit of their own...
Or maybe there is a benefit? After all, it is who they are. Maybe it does connect with like minded customers. Who would any "professional" be to judge?
And honestly, Many find the new ebay logo, Microsoft logo, and google logo boring, generic, and uninspired. Professionals did these logos. It's safe to say the higher-ups signed off on these designs.
At the end of the day, it's what the client wants, and it's for the client to sign off on.
If client chooses LogoFox, then good for them.
Whatever makes the client happy (TM).
That's the nature of the logo market.
Only alphanumeric characters are allowed. 3-25 characters max.
Also, I failed to remember that it was a ".co" domain, but of course getting the perfect domain is hard.