Personal taste is totally fine, but what you’re describing isn’t a logo, it’s an illustration. A good logo specifically must be simple so that it can be applied across a bunch of different contexts — print, digital, large, small. What if you wanted your logomark as a favicon? Depth and lighting would make it look like a smudge at that size. What about stitching your logo onto a hat?
This is the main issue. Logos are part of a brand system, and generating a logo with AI circumvents all that thought. You get something that might look good, but your whole system becomes super fragile.
Again, there’s no disagreeing with personal taste, it’s just a matter of thoughtful use of the system and medium.
I feel that you’re making the argument that we should compromise on the humanism of prominent and uniquitous pieces of art so that we can print t-shirts more cheaply. You can of course make the same argument about the building costs of modern boxy paneled apartments and office buildings, but that still doesn’t make them any less unpleasant to look at.
I feel that graphics designers (or really, brand managers), over the last 30 or so years, have made daily decisions about the cost effectiveness of something at the expense of beauty, and we now live in the most bland, generic, and tasteless era in modern history. What does a graphic designer even do anymore, besides copying other graphic designers?
To be clear, AI is not the answer. But intuitively, a colored, shaded, 3 dimensional logo is more appealing to me than another flat, generic, 1 dimensional line illustration that says literally nothing about your brand identity.
(Not the original guy that replied to you) I do agree about the blandness of many logos (god I hate flat design) and think the logo on the left is very bland, but the one on the right just does not work in many contexts. There’s a middle ground where it works just fine, but with as much detail as in the AI gen logo it will look awful at small sizes. One is usable as a general purpose logo, the other isn’t.
Try embroidering your “logo with lots of colors and gradients, depth, lighting” on a polo shit and see how little of it actually translates. Or even a one color print job on a mailing. It will look like an unrecognizable hot garbage smudge.
Not only will it look terrible it’ll be significantly more expensive, each color and complication is going to add to the price. A simple logo with a clean silhouette is going to look nice and save money.
That’s really only suitable if the logo is going be displayed at a larger size on a screen. Many times logos will be displayed much smaller, such as when used as a favicon. When you cram too many details into a small space it just becomes noise. This also applies if people glance at the logo, since too much detail will make it difficult to work out what it is.
Also as other people have mentioned. If you are going to be printing your logo, then you do need to have a design that uses just negative and positive space since it’s easier to print and will look much cleaner.
Additionally it’s pretty common for organizations to have multiple versions of the logo as well. Usually a black and white one, a colored version of it, and versions with and without text. They could also have a more detailed version of the logo as well, but the other versions are more useful, so they may not even bother.
tbh I prefer a logo with lots of colors and gradients, depth, lighting, etc. These ugly ass flat or outline logos have really ruined things
Personal taste is totally fine, but what you’re describing isn’t a logo, it’s an illustration. A good logo specifically must be simple so that it can be applied across a bunch of different contexts — print, digital, large, small. What if you wanted your logomark as a favicon? Depth and lighting would make it look like a smudge at that size. What about stitching your logo onto a hat?
This is the main issue. Logos are part of a brand system, and generating a logo with AI circumvents all that thought. You get something that might look good, but your whole system becomes super fragile.
Again, there’s no disagreeing with personal taste, it’s just a matter of thoughtful use of the system and medium.
I feel that you’re making the argument that we should compromise on the humanism of prominent and uniquitous pieces of art so that we can print t-shirts more cheaply. You can of course make the same argument about the building costs of modern boxy paneled apartments and office buildings, but that still doesn’t make them any less unpleasant to look at.
I feel that graphics designers (or really, brand managers), over the last 30 or so years, have made daily decisions about the cost effectiveness of something at the expense of beauty, and we now live in the most bland, generic, and tasteless era in modern history. What does a graphic designer even do anymore, besides copying other graphic designers?
To be clear, AI is not the answer. But intuitively, a colored, shaded, 3 dimensional logo is more appealing to me than another flat, generic, 1 dimensional line illustration that says literally nothing about your brand identity.
(Not the original guy that replied to you) I do agree about the blandness of many logos (god I hate flat design) and think the logo on the left is very bland, but the one on the right just does not work in many contexts. There’s a middle ground where it works just fine, but with as much detail as in the AI gen logo it will look awful at small sizes. One is usable as a general purpose logo, the other isn’t.
Try embroidering your “logo with lots of colors and gradients, depth, lighting” on a polo shit and see how little of it actually translates. Or even a one color print job on a mailing. It will look like an unrecognizable hot garbage smudge.
Not only will it look terrible it’ll be significantly more expensive, each color and complication is going to add to the price. A simple logo with a clean silhouette is going to look nice and save money.
It’ll save money, I don’t think it’ll look nice
If you hire a human designer there’s a much higher likelihood of it looking good.
That’s really only suitable if the logo is going be displayed at a larger size on a screen. Many times logos will be displayed much smaller, such as when used as a favicon. When you cram too many details into a small space it just becomes noise. This also applies if people glance at the logo, since too much detail will make it difficult to work out what it is.
Also as other people have mentioned. If you are going to be printing your logo, then you do need to have a design that uses just negative and positive space since it’s easier to print and will look much cleaner.
Additionally it’s pretty common for organizations to have multiple versions of the logo as well. Usually a black and white one, a colored version of it, and versions with and without text. They could also have a more detailed version of the logo as well, but the other versions are more useful, so they may not even bother.
You might just need two versions. The full colour one where the underlying medium supports it well, and a mono version for more restrictive media.