Show HN: I built a webapp to help web "designers" create logos and fonts quickly

http://use.fontorie.com

by wolfparade • 15 years ago

99 33 15 years ago

use.fontorie.com

This is awesome. Thank you.

jemka• 15 years ago

I spent a good 15 seconds trying to find the input box to type my fictional website name. You might want to make that more obvious.

wolfparade5• 15 years ago

I'll try to fix that. Thanks for the feedback.

sciurus• 15 years ago

Where is it? I gave up on finding it after about 30 seconds.

EDIT: Tried again, and realized the output is also the input.

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

Great, I need something to help me design a logo easily. You could even guilt-charge me $1 once I click SAVE.

However it isn't going to work as is. You need to show all fonts immediately. As a user, and potential paid user, I do not want to click endlessly.

itships• 15 years ago

Agreed, being able to see multiple variations of the logo simultaneously would be nice.

I could see myself paying somewhere between $1-$5 for a zero-effort placeholder logo like this.

danberger• 15 years ago

Instead of a dropdown, make it a radio menu that changes on click. It'll make it more usable!

wolfparade5• 15 years ago

The fonts are from Google Web Fonts API. Check out the examples for some awesome stuff that can be done with the site. Also add an example if you are visual talented. Finally, I'd like a lot of feedback on what needs to be done to make the webapp great.

alexfringes• 15 years ago

Initially, I was under the impression that this tool generates an image. Then I realized that it uses Google's Fonts–which makes it infinitely more useful for super fast logo prototypes. I would Make this more obvious. Don't hide the final "copy-and-pastable" CSS behind a link; it's the best feature.

It could also find more varied use if you allowed the user to input more text at smaller sizes in order to generate Google Font based CSS for other elements of a layout (or to preview how a logo would look at a more realistic size).

I would suggest a slight redesign of the controls on the left so that it is clear which elements affect the font and which are purely for the shadow. Similarly, the "submission" of a shadow to the list of shadows needs a more obvious description (both verbally and visually) of how this process functions.

Overall, I think this is an excellent way of getting a (placeholder) logo up and running in 20 seconds and I'd love to see how you expand on its current state.

flyosity• 15 years ago

Are you sure you didn't mean you created a tool to help web developers create logos quickly? I'm a designer and I really can't see myself ever using this tool. I have Photoshop open at all times and know all the typefaces I have on my system, so I can bust out something incredibly simple in seconds. Plus, for logos, there's just not much benefit of using a web font since you typically won't use the same font from your logo elsewhere on the site, and the selection of good web fonts is limited and their kerning sucks and/or can't be adjusted at a precise level.

Just my 2 cents.

Edit: One more thing, designers don't create logos quickly. They're sweated over and tweaked and modified over and over until they're perfect. It's not something that we quickly generate or don't care about if there are small alignment/kerning issues. I'm sure there are some good use cases here but they don't immediately pop into my mind.

wolfparade5• 15 years ago

yeah possibly. maybe it's more a tool for startups who don't want to pay a designer to make a web logo quickly. as for kerning and web typography i think there might be a better future with http://endtwist.github.com/kerning.js/ and http://letteringjs.com/

wicknicks2• 15 years ago

I wish I could work with you on my projects. I am more of a backend guy who has to get his hands dirty with front end stuff. Something like this could help me get atleast one thing on the page done more easily.

gallerytungsten• 15 years ago

I was going to write a similar reply to flyosity. This is a tool for non-designers. Designers already have far more precise tools.

wicknicks2• 15 years ago

Very nice and useful website. Couple of points:

  * The input box for the logo name is not obvious.
  * The options on the left hand side are quite techy. I don't understand how they can help.
  * Do all the four drop down boxes on the bottom work together? Or is it one font at a time only? The default view shows four active fonts. I was thinking that there was some cool algorithm which 'mixes' fonts. Is there any?

ralphsaunders• 15 years ago

Show HN: I built a webapp to help web "designers" create logos and fonts quickly

FTFY

pseudonym• 15 years ago

I'm seeing the logo half-cropped off the top of the screen, save to examples and the link is overlapping the Logo, and I can't find the text input anywhere on the screen to put my text into. Chrome and Firefox on Mac OS X 10.6.7.

bad_user• 15 years ago

Hey, I'm getting an error:

    http://use.fontorie.com/5d90df57ffffffkkf000efn

wolfparade5• 15 years ago

It's not prefect yet.

paulsocal• 15 years ago

This is cool, i'd use it. Its quick to get an idea of what font to use. A few improvements (using chrome): 1) Didnt know I can change the text that says 'Logo.' Took me a while to click the text and change it. Indicate that somewhere. 2) It would be cool if I was able to change the background as well. 3) In the drop downs, it would be awesome to see images of sample text of that font. 4) Letter spacing would also be awesome.

That's about it for now. Keep up the good work! Looks cool!

wolfparade5• 15 years ago

Thanks for the great feedback.

thomasswift• 15 years ago

I think this is very cool.

One piece of feedback from how I would use this type of tool: Once I set my logotext, which I found not to be a problem, I would love to just jam on the down arrow on my keyboard to cycle through all. It sort of worked because it would open the last select used. but then it be pretty cool for my uses at least.

ruethewhirled• 15 years ago

Would be nice if you could include some information about whether the usage of the fonts is free eg licensing/legal type information

danejensen• 15 years ago

fonts are totally free google puts them

oacgnol• 15 years ago

I've bookmarked this for myself later on- I'm a developer with no design chops whatsoever. There's a big space for apps that make it easier for developers to push out aesthetically pleasing front ends.

Zimahl• 15 years ago

As a developer with a slight interest in design, this is great. Definitely bookmarked for future use. I can think of just one suggestion outside of what others have suggested:

I'd love it if I could get it as an image instead of CSS. Since I would only use it for a display and probably not any dynamic text, just a transparent png export of the image would be sweet. Even a non-transparent image export would be useful (and necessary with any amount of blur on the drop shadow).

On my own I can print screen and pull in the text into an image, resize it, and make it transparent but others might not have the resources or know how to do that.

noduerme• 15 years ago

Nice until Google cuts it off and starts charging for it -- like they did with translation =\

Aaronontheweb• 15 years ago

Speaking as a developer who royally sucks at design... THANK YOU. This looks like it could be a big help for me :)

brandnewlow• 15 years ago

SQL

JCB_K• 15 years ago

Looks awful on this (admittedly small) screen: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2819425/fontorie.png

liamk• 15 years ago

The layout looks broken on an iPad2.

bprater• 15 years ago

I didn't see a font size option? Did I miss it?

gautaml• 15 years ago

I can't ever see a real designer using this.

A developer with no artistic skills? Perhaps.

frio• 15 years ago

Couple things:

* a suggestion: add a colour slider to allow changing the background colour of the page. It can be jarring whipping something up against a light blue background that's intended for a site with a different colour scheme.

* minor bug - when choosing a font from a different dropdown box (ie. picking one under "curvey", when the current selection is from "standary"), if the font is already the "chosen" one (ie. if the box was displaying "sniglet", and I click it again), the logo font doesn't refresh. It's not hard to work around (pick something else from the list, and then pick that one again), but it shouldn't be hard to fix either.

Other than that, I like it. Well done :).

Show HN: I built a webapp to help web "designers" create logos and fonts quickly

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