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.
There are are a lot of code generators (written by programmers) and they never seem to offend the programmers. I don't think everything can be automated with satisfying results or in a reasonable time but come on, why would an attempt be offending or degrading?
In fairness, I often see devs highly offended by automated output, including where it makes no difference whatsoever to performance and maintainability (and particularly so if it improves on any of those). There is plenty of frothing out there about hand-tuned SQL vs ORM and hand-crafted semantic HTML/CSS for example.
> 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.
I'm a designer, too, and there are those of us who believe that not only is design automation possible, it is likely, and we will be much the better as contributors and society for it.
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.
I've heard this anti-aesthetic argument before and I don't buy it. There's a reason companies like Stripe are lauded for their design efforts while Google comes out with material design...
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).
Not GP, but where exactly was their argument anti-aesthetic? Art =/= aesthetics, Design =/= art. GP said:
design trends are just manifestations of a particular temporal affinity towards one aesthetic or another which sounds reasonable to me, considering recent trends towards flat/ish designs
Maybe you'd like to address his/her points instead of creating strawmen?
It's only degrading to your profession if it's actually true.
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.
That doesn't stop it being potentially degrading though.
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.
I agree, and to amplify: while there are surely aspects of design that can be automated, the part that's difficult is that a design should actually mean something. Having an algorithmically designed logo tie the room together -- crystallize a company's business and culture, and provide a memorable rallying point -- that's the hard part. Computer-generated design is like a ghostly thread of expression of the design sensibilities of the writers of the software from which it emerges.
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.
If someone is willing to use a free logo generator, they already don't care about design and would not be happy with any money they are spending on your services.
It's the same as a software engineer being offended that a free website generator exists.
Eh, Lucent for a while had a logo that was (nearly literally) a sample brush from Painter or something. Painty red circle. And many other logos are pretty much like that and can definitely be generated by algorithms. I'd be shocked if some large logos were picked with far less thought than you're describing here.
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.
I sympathise with your perspective, but surely some of those needs (colour theory, contrast, etc) can be solved algorithmically and others (public perception and brand "feel") could be automatically tested by a site/script surveying users in the target segment.
You need someone creative to generate the good ideas to be used in the first place.
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.
(My sympathy stems from me doing a lot of design work so I'm not approaching this from a "design is useless" aspect.)
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.
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).
"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."
Maybe let the entity decide for themselves what they want?
I am trying to think of a good word to encapsulate this concept.
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.
