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Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

Websites that spit out “logos” are a dime a dozen. What all of them fail to understand is that a logo is not just an icon that you aesthetically like, it’s a communication tool. A logo is not for the CEO, it’s for the customers. These tools do a huge disservice to the businesses who pay for them by selling a bland generic icon which means nothing and has no personality. But then again, I no longer have the strength or will to fight against the poor design decisions of others. I’m glad I left that world.

Now it’s the era of the AI grift, where every low effort startup which can be made with AI will be made with AI. As long as there’s fast money to be made at the end, everything else is pushed aside. I remember when the norm was “I made this cool thing and had interesting challenges along the way”. Now it’s “I don’t really understand how I made this, but it made me money”.

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I work in marketing and branding and I agree with you. But I think it should also be mentioned that the quest to distill complex meaning into a simple, memorable, scalable logo that also achieves many other specific brand objectives sometimes leads to delusions of grandeur.

Case in point, the now infamous 2008 Pepsi logo redesign manual:

https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesig...

> a logo is not just an icon that you aesthetically like, it’s a communication tool

Some years ago my then-employer saw fit for me to be included in a meeting talking about the company's new logo.

I attended a presentation from a couple guys in marketing, who seemed to be quite proud of what they'd done. It was an hour-long presentation talking about how the relative merits of the subtle hues of blue and orange with oblique angles, versus green and white with rounded edges.

They freely admitted that in addition to spending two or three employee-weeks on this, they had used some...not exactly big bucks, but medium-sized bucks, on a consultant for a week, and felt the results were good and it was time and money well spent.

I then cogently pointed out that it only takes 20 minutes put the first letter of the company's name in the font, select colors and backgrounds, and draw a circle or a polygon or something around it. As proof, I showed my laptop; I'd opened up Inkscape within the first 5 minutes of the meeting and knocked out a perfectly serviceable logo in the next 20 minutes while they were talking about the psychology of the color purple.

I've never made a buying decision for a product in my life based on a logo. And putting this amount of time into the exercise was a foolish waste of time and money; we ought to be building features and documentation.

One of my closest coworkers within that company, who witnessed the whole situation, later explained to me that there is apparently a whole... something to logo design that I utterly and completely just don't get. I don't pretend to understand it, I suppose I felt like a deaf person might feel when someone tries to explain to them what music is.

This was a little bit fascinating, a little bit enlightening, a little bit horrifying, and also terribly confusing.

I didn't have to worry about it much though, because for some reason I was never invited to any future meetings about logos, website CSS, or other branding decisions :)

I'm tempted to ask parent (or anyone reading this) for resources that might help me better understand this world that I was told exists but I know nothing about. I'm actually not too sure if there are tutorials for my level that will help me, or if I'm so "deaf" that trying to learn this stuff is completely hopeless for me.

> I've never made a buying decision for a product in my life based on a logo.

I called a logo a communication tool, not a selling tool.

But rest assured, every day many many people buy something because of the logo and what it represents. Look no further than the fashion industry: premium brands have their logo plastered on their products in huge sizes or as a pattern because it signals to others a “status”. People buy known counterfeits because they look like expensive originals.

Remember when people badmouthed the iPhone 4S or the first SE because “it looks like a previous year phone” despite being technically superior in every way? Similar logic.

To be clear, I vehemently disagree with those attitudes. But they are real.

To have your logo in a physical product it needs to adhere to a number of technical characteristics. For example, it may need to be identifiable by shape alone, without colour, and not have thin lines because it will be embossed. When a logo is purely digital, some concerns are the same while others shift. For example, you may need it to work at tiny sizes for a favicon, or to display in a watch.

The role of a designer is to understand those necessities and deliver a result which can adequately accommodate them. Just like in software, there are tradeoffs to be made and you need to understand what those are to make something good.

I launched more than 30 projects, some successful, other not, and I can tell you, when you're starting out, the logo does not matter at all. The name and domain either.

Once you have some validation, sure! But before that, bothering with a designer-tier logo is a waste of time & money. The app is aimed at small indie makers who don't have time/budget for a designer, but don't want a generic vector from flaticons and others :)

You’re contradicting yourself. If the logo doesn’t matter, then using a generic vector isn’t a problem. In fact, it is better than paying for any “logo maker” because it’s free!

I have no qualms with companies starting out and using something generic to make due, as long as they understand the difference. But the dozens of logo maker websites including yours all sell themselves as if they’re the same as a custom logo, and they’re not.

Also, the name and domain do matter. I’ve seen projects fail because they inadvertently named themselves after a negative word in another language.

I agree to disagree!

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