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I was prompted to write this post after seeing the discussion on Hacker News of a logo generated by a user using Dall-E 2.
My journey was similar but much faster and if I'm being honest gave a better result that is more "logo" like, cheaper and scales better. The original post's result was more like a mascot in my mind, than a logo (but that could be what the author was trying to achieve).
It's not a completely AI automated process but took 90% of the human designer out of the equation.
Spoiler - my completed logo looks like this:
When starting a new project, for better or worse I like to get a name, and some branding sorted early just so I have something to hang everything else off. Yes this sometimes changes later in the lifecycle but often not as the brand grows with the whole project identity in my mind.
Currently I'm developing a few tools, mostly for personal use that interact with various Social Media accounts. There might be a need to share these tools with a few others in a couple of organisations so let's give it a name... Err "Social"... think of an animal beginning with "S" -> "Serval" OK SocialServal it is!
My usual process for generating a logo is to hop on to Fiverr and get something close to what I'm after and then manually tweak it by hand (I'm far from a designer but I know my way around Adobe enough to edit). The prices on Fiverr have been creeping up over the years and now a rough logo with a couple of concepts runs to nearer £25 (of which £2.90 is "service fee" making a mockery of the whole "Fiverr" name)
Well I'm also an early user of the AI generator MidJourney I'd burned through the free credits and was reasonably impressed...
MidJourney seems to work in a very similar way to Dall-E with a text prompt, 4 results and then the ability to refine and work on those results.
With no free credits left I signed up to the most basic package of $10 per month for 100 images (much cheaper than Dall-E) and can cancel the subscription at any time.
I thought I'd start with something simple and entered the command (via their discord bot) of /imagine serval :: logo
Hmmm option 2 (top right) maybe has a little bit of promise but nothing else here, let's "re-roll" with the same prompt.
Option 4 looks nice for a logo, but isn't very representative of a Serval - could I rename the project to ZocialZebra perhaps!?
Nah - let's "re-roll" again
OK now we're getting somewhere, option 4 looks pretty good and is fairly recognisable as a serval. It's not quite right, so a single click on the "Option 4 variations" button gave the following result:
Yeah number 2 is on the mark, let's upscale that (also within MidJourney) so I have a higher resolution image to work with...
That's looking good - time in MidJourney, approx 5 minutes
Load the image into Photoshop for some very minor tweaks (mirror down the middle so it's properly symmetrical, remove odd blemish and reduce the colour palette) - Time in Photoshop, approx 5 minutes
Next in to Illustrator (or vector program of your choice) to trace the image (using autotrace - I don't have time to use a pen tool!). Smooth the lines a bit (again automated) and then decide the eyes need to look a bit "friendlier" so break out the pen tool anyway and reshape them by hand. Export as SVG and boom we're done! Total time in Illustrator - 20 minutes
I've now got a 5k svg logo that I can add subtle animations to if I want that is perfect for this project.
Was human input needed and some artistic/technical skill required to get here? Absolutely, but the crucial thing for me was being able to iterate top level ideas very quickly at a cost of much less than $10 and the whole process took around half an hour.
If I was after a logo for a bigger project I absolutely would pay a designer as they add subtle cues and flourishes to a logo that no AI can yet replicate. But for now, sorry designers but at this level you have been replaced for me.