Hatchful – Create stunning logos in seconds

https://hatchful.shopify.com/

by sytelus • 8 years ago

96 22 8 years ago

hatchful.shopify.com

austinjp• 8 years ago

A few of these are nice enough, but not "stunning". You really do need to pay a talented human for that, currently.

I'm a little concerned that automated creative services like this are encouraging a race to the bottom, a morass of bland identikit brands.

This is similar to the problem faced by music recommendation services: they don't surprise you, and most people like the occasional surprise.

Designers must be irritated and worried by logo design automation. They already have to scrape around for gigs, and find their work hugely undervalued.

fouc2• 8 years ago

These automated logos are good for businesses that are just starting out. Once they're profitable, they're more able to invest their branding, and pay good money for good designers.

gumby• 8 years ago

That's very good insight: like so many things you can start out successfully with something simple and expand/rebuild it later.

Frankly I'd worry about a company that invested a lot on its logo early. NeXT did and while they had other successes (cough OS X) the company itself didn't make it.

Ceredron• 8 years ago

Their work isn't valuable. A logo, while prominent, rarely contributes anything of actual value to a company.

xigma2• 8 years ago

That's not true. I'm sometimes faced with a lot of companies to choose from and if one of those companies has a badly designed logo, I'll immediately become suspicious of all of their other qualities.

On the other hand, a really good logo doesn't have the opposite effect, because I know some designer (or AI, whatever) made it for them.

xigma2• 8 years ago

I can't remember ever having been stunned by a logo.

The height of my experiences could be described as:

"Oh, nice logo." or "Hmm, clever."

The line between "clever" and "trying too hard to be clever" is also quite fine.

Some logos become iconic, but that has as much to do with the brand itself as with the logo. Even if Microsoft had the Nike logo, it would still be uncool.

chiefalchemist• 8 years ago

"A few of these are nice enough, but not "stunning". You really do need to pay a talented human for that, currently."

Perhaps. Or you (or the creative human talent) could use this as a prototyping tool? Quick low cost brainstorming / iterations to a explore ideas before the high cost human talent kicks in.

Most clients __think__ they know what they want, but the reality is it's closer to "we'll know it when we see it." Getting some ideas in front of them - knowing all but one is going to be paid for - as quickly as possible is a blessing.

fouc2• 8 years ago

Looks like this was launched 10 months ago or so?

I was wondering if shopify had acquired logojoy.com but it looks like this is their own take on it.

O_H_E• 8 years ago

Well they are not "stunning", but pretty nice for a dev who does not want to pad a designer for a small project or blog.

Theodores• 8 years ago

Wrong!

I am getting tired of this meme that people who can code - 'devs' - can't pick up a pen and design a logo. It is a practically xenophobic assertion.

The 'dev' type might admit to dwelling in their mother's basement, they might admit to having hygiene issues but the stereotype 'dev' type would never admit to using 'Shopify'. 'Shopify' is designed for people that are not developers. It's a hosted platform with all the 'dev' potential of mySpace or Duplo Lego. It is not what a true 'dev' wants.

So this logo maker is not for a 'dev' audience. It is for people that have a new business they want to get online. Not a 'small project' or a 'blog', but an ecommerce effort that hopefully makes money. For this audience they may want to involve a 'professional designer' at some stage, but, starting out, without the business realised, this tool makes it easy for them to get a placeholder, something to work with.

A business has to be built before someone else can take a look at it and design the logo that is the distillation of the many things that go into that business. During this phase a placeholder is fine.

pcx• 8 years ago

You are overreacting. I agree with the OP. I am a dev. I've designed a few websites before and can find my way around Photoshop or Illustrator. But I would rather just use this tool and generate a logo in 10mins for my side project. Definitely useful.

Lunatic666• 8 years ago

A proper logo is certainly a good start, but you need a well thought through Corporate Identity if you want to continue with your website. Think about the colors, the fonts etc. This must all match the logo or it looks strange. I use the color tool from Adobe [0] a lot to figure out matching colors.

[0] https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel

PostOnce• 8 years ago

I feel like some of the comments here are neglecting the fact that the average designer (as with all things) is mediocre, just as the average book isn't a great read, the average logo isn't iconic.

Nor does the average plumbing business or doctor's office need a "corporate identity" including from scratch typefaces from a foundry, etc.

Maybe if they hired someone the result would be better, but it's also possible it would be worse. Does it really matter, anyway, it's a logo, not a critical safety system, the success a business hardly hinges on its logo starting out.

nicolaslem• 8 years ago

I've been looking for a tool like that for a while for a small open source project. Most of the other logo generators I've found only give you a single file and then you're on your own.

This one generates an archive with a few interesting alternatives like a favicon or a transparent background version. For someone not versed into graphic design this is helpful.

arthurfm2• 8 years ago

I wonder if logo generators such as Hatchful could have designed a better logo for the Library of Congress than Pentagram did recently?

https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_log...

nnq• 8 years ago

that logo looks amazing, referring here especially to the ability to create endless logo variants by interspersing thematic visuals between the letter of the logo...

for some logos the "base case" doesn't really matter, you want something based on which you can create infinite variation, something that's open to "mutations".

you example is basically a good case of why automatic or AI-driven design tools will "always" suck... nobody really ever wants a design that "just looks f awesome", that's useless...

"powerful ugliness" is always more beautiful in the end...

sytelus• 8 years ago

Not really. It generalizes to make something unique to barely recognizable. It’s like Microsoft’s new logo is “Software Company”. When you put this logo on road signs, brochures etc without variations, it would look aweful. Also, notice that all these variations could have been possible with virtually any other designs. In fact the particular way they have chose to do variations produces sizes that would be incompatible in too many scenarios. I now know which company not to approach for my logo designs :).

OskarS• 8 years ago

"Library Library of Congress"

arthurfm2• 8 years ago

Also "Libr Library of Congress ary"!

btrettel• 8 years ago

The new logo is awful in my opinion. I've visited the Library of Congress many times to locate some hard to find books and journals. Seems the Library of Congress catalog doesn't use the new logo, so I hadn't seen this yet despite using the catalog a few times over the past few days.

Glad to see I'm not the only one reading this as "Library Library of Congress".

rancar2• 8 years ago

Hatchful has potential. Most of the better ones are paid though, such as LogoMaker[1] which was acquired by Deluxe and Taylor Brands[2] which landed a $15 million series B.

[1] https://secure.logomaker.com/logomakerv3/

[2] https://www.tailorbrands.com/lp-home

wool_gather• 8 years ago

Interesting; I can see this having value as an idea generator. I have an app in progress that will need a logo eventually. I've got a couple of thoughts sketched out, but don't really like any of them so far. I just ran through this tool a couple of times and got three good starting points that I could tweak and, I think, be pretty happy with.

Hatchful – Create stunning logos in seconds

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