I honestly thought this was going to generate a free logo and got really excited for some unknown reason? I guess I was wondering how it all worked, then I clicked through and it made way more sense. That was a wild ride!
I'm envisaging scraping colours and fonts from the target domain to recreate a text-only logo.
1. It degrades design as a profession. It's essentially saying that logo design can be done by an algorithm. "There's no creativity to it". Wouldn't you be offended if someone said a basic algorithm could eliminate your job? (perhaps you wouldn't)
2. It's an overly simplistic view of what a logo/brand identity is. You can't just pick out some basic shapes and text for your logo. You need color theory, contrast analysis, a brand strategy, a well developed concept, etc.
Of course not. In fact, I spend quite a large portion of my time automating most of my work, so I can do other, more interesting things.
Besides, if a company looked for and used a "free logo generator", would that company really be the type of client you wanted to pick up?
- Leonard McCoy
Of course not. That still doesn't mean that the sentiment isn't degrading to designers. (it is)
> Developers should avoid writing code by hand and instead write abstract high-level programs that generate code. This rule aims to reduce human errors and save time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Eric_Raymond.E...
I think your perspective is interesting. Wrong, but interesting and probably shared by many others in various fields.
It's the same as a software engineer being offended that a free website generator exists.
Maybe let the entity decide for themselves what they want?
I was a software developer for many years, and I've seen hundreds of claims for software to automate (in one guise or other) that job, replacing the need for coders.
None of these claims offended me. The vast majority have been comically useless. The rest have just helped remove some dull bit of grunt work out of the job, allowing me to focus on something more valuable.
I would argue it's hubris to think one brain could forever outperform the cumulative experience and information that we can automate.
When people, and even entire communities, define themselves by the job they do, they often end up feeling degraded and worthless as the jobs are replaced.
Doesn't mean that the automation shouldn't happen. But that sense of degradation is real for some people.
Random mutation and A/B would surely take millenia, even assuming huge traffic in the first place. And even then, one of the internal criticisms of A/B at Amazon was that it helped refine local optima (e.g. a next button in a checkout cart) but is weak on a holistic view (whole page, user experience), and making larger innovative jumps (which is where you end up getting swallowed by your competition of course).
Of course, you could just think of a seasoned creative as a really powerful software/hardware combo, with AI and heuristics light years ahead, and cheap at the price.
Do you think that what's out there already could serve as a fairly good starting place? Run them past users to work out which out of thousands of logos are effective. Then isolate components (marks, text, etc) and test those, plus random combinations of the same.
I can appreciate the value in very high level brand creation, but I also think you can get 90% of the way there at 1% of the budget for many businesses. A remotely competent designer can slap down a shape and choose a font for the text and beat half the small business logos out there in a few minutes.
1. You don't have the users to test yet.
2. This is what really makes it untenable - what is the logo for, what does effective mean, 90% of where? This is why brand creation is expensive as hell. There's a lot of work involved and by definition it is bespoke and without shortcuts. That's the whole point or it wouldn't be brand creation in any sense. When you see a logotype, it's just the tip of the iceberg.
I suspect that a lot of people might think of branding as including these cheap services where an underpaid young offshore photoshop whizz throws together an infinity symbol, dolphin, or generic swoosh and even goes so far as to hand kern some text (and bear in mind that even this kind of junior typographic task can't be automated yet).
I would argue that this isn't a ghetto version of the kind of branding that a large company does, but a cargo cult version. The logotype part is highly visible but is the tiniest component of branding - it is superficial and meaningless in isolation. Very much unlike this process, real branding is about discovering and generating an extremely high input of info and ideas and turning this into a very small and focused output, articulating the essence. (And of course a big part of the cost for a large org is that you often need to cover things like web, print, letterheads, reports, sides of trucks, and so on. All whilst maintaining brand consistency.)
Assuming you can't afford to pay for full branding, I think the best solution is to do just enough (e.g. many here might just need something for digital and business cards) and for it to be done by someone close to the company owner of even the owner themselves, as they will live and breathe what the company is for and what makes it distinct. Even poorly executed, this will communicate a much clearer story and have real value imo (trying to avoid the word authentic here but it's probably applicable).
Google's Mathias Duarte advocated as such at UXPA last year in his keynote.
Think about it this way - design trends are just manifestations of a particular temporal affinity towards one aesthetic or another. Machines can measure this and expound as well as react to it at a much faster scale than the human mind can.
Design isn't art. There are way too many designers out there who think it is. Art is art. Design is about solving problems. You can and totally should automate as much of that as possible.
If there's anything less scientific than the material design docs I want you to send it to me. Design hinges on aesthetics. You can't just ignore it (well you can, but you might end up with something that looks like material design).
Maybe you'd like to address his/her points instead of creating strawmen?
Also, offended? It's like photographers getting upset over people giving stuff away, or the influx of rather good amateurs killing their market.
I'm just checking out Tailor Brands, and I can say with certainty the output is similar to what I've seen professional designers offer, on occasion.
Consider the hidden arrow in the "Ex" of FedEx, when they rebranded from "Federal Express"; the rational propeller of BMW; even something as simple as the Burger King logo being sandwiched in a hamburger bun. Granted, logo design is just one small corner of design in general, but algorithmically generated logos do indeed result in a herd of swooshes, globes, and rings orbiting bold text (notwithstanding the similar designs of many humans who fail to recruit sufficient creativity or inspiration). Some of these can even be aesthetically pleasing, but it's so much better when a logo is retrospectively obvious and actually means something.
Hey, some of my best friends are basic algorithms!
Its the difference between Picasso's line drawings and a child's scribble, the difference between a maguro and otoro cut of tuna, the difference between a script kiddy's work and the sophistication of stuxnet. To a laymen they are the pretty much indistinguishable. But for those who have the experience to know the difference, suggesting the two are equivalent is fairly ridiculous.
2) If it isn't I can rapidly prototype my basic ideas and take them to a designer. This is excellent and I'd embrace this as a designer.
There are parts of any expertise that are formulaic, and by using the word "parts" I'm being generous to humankind.
Should systems/ops folks be 'offended' that PaaS are becoming the default choice for new projects?
If you DO think they should be offended, then I think you're flat wrong. Being offended by commoditisation is like being angry at entropy, or enraged by gravity.
If you DON'T think they should be offended; why not? Does their job not require thought, or creativity? I'd answer that one carefully if I were you ;)