11 ms·
Open-Sourced Logos
- samwyse 11y ago1) I really like this! 2) How to make it better: Design your own quick-and-dirty logo. 2a) Upload a photo. 2b) Apply a filter. 2c) Overlay a simple icon. 2d) Bonus: combine filter and icon to create a favicon!
- kocsmy 11y agoI am using this since I've seen it on ProductHunt. Pretty good stuff.
- eccstartup 11y agoHow to open it in an open sourced way? GIMP?
- nacs 11y agoInkscape ( https://inkscape.org/ https://inkscape.org/ ). Runs on Win/Mac/Linux and OSS.
- eccstartup 11y agoThanks.
- mratzloff 11y agoYou, too, can have a generic logo that doesn't actually reflect your individual company, message, or values! Simply pair it with a font of your choosing (font and logo need not match), and you have yourself a brand. These kinds of things devalue the actual work that goes into real branding, like crowdsourcing your logo or Marissa Mayer popping out something that she thinks "looks nice" over a weekend. It also has the effect that any graphic designer who can whip something up in Illustrator thinks they are a brand expert.
- jiblylabs 11y agoIf you're serious about your brand, they seem to offer a custom solution. This is however great for having a quick placeholder to get you going. Don't think it devalues design at all. In fact, it clearly states these are designs that were unused and instead of just having them sitting idle, they are opening it up for those that need quick placeholders.
- yesimahuman 11y agoDesign isn't an all-or-nothing thing. Many of the companies we respect for design came from quick and dirty roots, and if this helps someone get there more quickly, that seems like a plus to me.
- YngwieMalware 11y agoI wonder if the OP has ever even seen Pentagram's earlier work. This assumption that all branding has been slaved over, or that no one has ever come up with a good brand in a short period time, show a lack of understanding about branding AND logo design. Sometimes the quick ideas are the best ones.
- mratzloff 11y agoYou got all that from my post which said nothing about a logo needing to be "slaved over"? It does, however, take some thought. Perhaps you were referring to my comment about Mayer, whose creative output amounted to a collective shrug, as she (and, sure, the design team she micromanaged) produced a logo that did nothing to communicate a new strategy, vision, or purpose. Which is perhaps appropriate for Yahoo, after all.
- YngwieMalware 11y agoPerhaps being so dismissive about something that is potentially very useful for seeding new ideas about identity wasn't the ideal way to present yourself. Unless that's your personal brand voice, I guess?
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- kampsduac 11y agoI have been building my first personal site with links to demo toy projects and was just about to figure out the logo situation. I want to create a simple but engaging brand for myself. This rocks. Thanks!
- TillE 11y agoThey don't seem to mention it anywhere, but Inkscape is probably the best tool for opening .ai files, assuming you don't have a copy of Adobe Illustrator.
- leni536 11y agoWhat's the actual license?
- itslennysfault 11y agoCreative Commons (it's at the bottom of the page). Specifically: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- its2complicated 11y agoThey're all just geometric shapes that anyone could throw together. Really, you're pretty damn lazy or uninspired if you can't put together a stop sign outline with 2 circles on either side of it!
- TheLudd 11y agoI could not throw anything together of this quality. If I were to create a product by myself, using one of the ones available would certainly be a step up.
- overcast 11y agoDo you realize how many company logos are just the Helvetica font? You can't get any more basic than that. When you're just getting started, especially a one man operation, anything to get your product up and running quicker is a good thing. Here's a few "no name" companies. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/40-excellent-logos-created-with-helvetica/ http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/40-excellent-logos-c...
- its2complicated 11y agoYes, but thought, money, and man hours went into them. They didn't just grab rejected logos from the "commodity" bin, which is what we have here. Seriously, if you can't put some design effort into your logo then something's wrong.
- brudgers 11y agoThis form of criticism is along the lines of "The Gettysburg Address is just words anyone could write." The important part of creative work is not the potential but actually doing it. There's no such thing as "a design in my head." Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that the logos are cultural artifacts of high calibre. But that what they share with such works is actuality. Their creator can get better in ways that everyone who could but doesn't can't.
- vacri 11y agoWith a service like this, you can peruse a catalogue and find one that jumps out at you. Half the battle in a logo is finding something that you like.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoThe pharmacy logo is more or less the logo of Lloyds Pharmacy in the UK. Close enough that it could be deemed to be infringing their TM IMO (it's tricky though with generic imagery).
- dazc 11y agoVery similar indeed although it looks like they're in the process of rebranding anyway? http://www.lloydspharmacy.com/ http://www.lloydspharmacy.com/
- propter_hoc 11y agoIf you're referring to this device [1], it's a matter of opinion. Personally I wouldn't really agree: the mortar and pestle is a common enough device and the leaf is a nice distinctive element. The real risk in a situation like this is not really that you get a C&D from using it on your startup's landing page. The risk is that if you eventually tried to file a trademark for it, you would lose: either because some large firm's lawyers would oppose and have no trouble outspending you; or because, if you tried to file a trademark on an open-source logo you found on HN, you probably got bad legal advice. If I had a natural-supplement startup, for example, I'd be fine using this open-source logo as a placeholder and developing a new logo once I wanted to start a trademark registration process. http://enjoykingsheath.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/lloyds-pharmacy1.gif http://enjoykingsheath.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/lloyds...
- weinzierl 11y ago> The real risk in a situation like this is not really that you get a C&D from using it on your startup's landing page. Doesn't a trademark have to be defended if you won't face the risk to lose it? Is the C&D really so unlikely?
- propter_hoc 11y agoIP law firms use automated software to scrape the trademark registration filings at the USPTO and other national trademark offices (ex. [1]). These software services automatically assess filings for possible infrigement. This is the most likely way for a bigco's lawyers to find out about your logo or company name - far more likely than them finding out about your startup from techcrunch or some other source. Unfortunately for me, this happened to me. I was able to negotiate a coexistence agreement for my logo, but I could have done without the pain. If I were to start over from scratch, I would seriously consider doing the Apple/Google offline foreign filing trick [2]. [1] http://towergatesoftware.com/ http://towergatesoftware.com/ [2] http://blog.altlegal.com/tongan-shell-game-how-apple-and-google-file-trademarks-in-secret http://blog.altlegal.com/tongan-shell-game-how-apple-and-goo...
- nathancahill 11y ago#16 is gold. Using that on my next project.
- paulpauper 11y agoThese logos aren't good. A logo should have some degree of symmetry, simple enough to draw, original, and not readily resembling something in real life or a prior logo. this is an umbrella plus tear drop: http://www.logodust.com/img/logo18.png http://www.logodust.com/img/logo18.png paperclip http://www.logodust.com/img/logo20.png http://www.logodust.com/img/logo20.png too complicated to be effective: http://www.logodust.com/img/logo9.png http://www.logodust.com/img/logo9.png ripoff of star trek and anarchy circle http://www.logodust.com/img/logo2.png http://www.logodust.com/img/logo2.png this was the only good one http://www.logodust.com/img/logo1.png http://www.logodust.com/img/logo1.png
- Chris2048 11y ago> A logo should ... Why?
- serf 11y agoLet me un-ellipses the quote so we can make some sense of things. > A logo should (...) have some degree of symmetry, simple enough to draw, original, and not readily resembling something in real life or a prior logo. Symmetry is valued by us humans as a positive aesthetic. Simplicity aids in recall. Originality aids in brand recognition. Those are some whys.
- diego_moita 11y ago> These logos aren't good. For a Fortune 500? Sure not. For someone with problems much bigger than slick branding they are good enough.
- olalonde 11y agoJust like domain names should be short, pronounceable, .com, memorisable, etc. Good luck with that buddy.
- ghgr 11y ago> and not readily resembling something in real life or a prior logo. I appreciate some of your other points, but I particularly disagree with that one. Counterexamples right off the top of my head: Apple, Lacoste, Shell, Camel, Pringles, McDonalds, Schwarzkopf, Puma, Interflora....
- eecks 11y agoAwesome - thanks
- willphipps2000 11y agono worries blaaaad
- userbinator 11y agoI wonder how easy it would be to generate more logos like these, via neural network or other means.
- Lerc 11y agoNeural networks might be tricky. Logos tend to be precise, neural networks work better when the result is fuzzier. On the other hand, identifying a good logo is the sort of fuzzy problem that you might be able to train a network for. Use it as a fitness function over some other algorithm. You could have a generator that combined a variety of operations into a 'logo expression' that generates an image. Have values and operations in the expression to represent: a variety of geometric shapes. composite operations (union, intersection, subtraction etc.) symmetry operations (reflective, rotational) Glyph images (possibly with some sort of semantic metadata to enable relationships between multiple glyphs) Transformations (translatiosn, rotations etc. Possibly just a matrix) Filters (smooth corners, grow shape, generate outline) So you get something like square(1.5).rotate(45).smooth(30).outline(3).translate(-0.5,0.0).rotationalSymmetry(5).subtract( circle(0.25).translate(0.5,0.5) ) Which if I got it right should be a set of 5 squares with rounded corners and a line thickness of 3 arranges in a circle and a small circle cut out of the bottom right corner of the squares.
- Lerc 11y agoI'll add to that the possibility of adding a layer similar to http://www.contextfreeart.org/ http://www.contextfreeart.org/ It occupies a somewhat similar space, (I believe it does not provide composition operations). Having the ability to define shapes as a probabilistic combination of other shapes gives you a massive variety of possibilities. something like this would allow for a good variety of base imagery which could then have the layer I posted in the previous comment come after. Check out the context free art gallery for some amazing (not very logo like) images http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/ http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/
- sago 11y agoGenetic programming using a design grammar (i.e. a hierarchical rule system, like a language grammar) is probably a much more natural fit than neural networks for generating the logos. It's been done before with other domains, including architecture. Using a neural network to learn the evaluation function (i.e. put a number on how 'good' a candidate logo is) in a GP is very possible though.
- RobbyMcCullough 11y agoThanks for this! These could be really useful for folks creating design templates. There's tons of stock photos, icons, videos, etc available, but not a lot of logos. I don't see any information about a license, though? This article might be helpful: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Marking_your_work_with_a_CC_license https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Marking_your_work_with...
- officemonkey 11y agoI swear I thought I read "Open Sources LEGOs" and I was super pumped up.
- bobwaycott 11y agoI read "open sourced logs" for some reason. I was confused by what that could mean. I clicked, and felt even more confused.
- jtolmar 11y agoThe amateur game development community would love these. Designing logos for in-universe companies is a thankless chore. But they're really adverse to using things without an explicit license. This could really use a CC0 stamp somewhere.
- sago 11y agoIt does have an explicit license CC4 Attribution. So you put Logos by XX in your credits and you're done.
- willphipps2000 11y agohttp://members.goatse.cx/ http://members.goatse.cx/ Ifno.info Freenetprojectdotorg
- willphipps2000 11y agohttps://nvd.nist.gov/ https://nvd.nist.gov/
- willphipps2000 11y agoDynoptica.com way back lmeditcom
- fluxic 11y agoAh, another website using the Unsplash.com give-everything-away business model. Great concept! And great Unsplash photos beneath the logos :)
- drakonka 11y agoThis is great! I played around with mixing a couple of them into a possible logo for my snail simulation: http://i.imgur.com/hRkCw2q.png http://i.imgur.com/hRkCw2q.png
- DonHopkins 11y agoHere's a nice classic logo: http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp
- ctstover 11y agoI like this, but I'm trying to understand the consequences of more than one person using the same one. I think the answer is, nothing until two or more users start to clash. At which point it will come down to who trademarked it first. That sounds reasonable, since you are probably dealing with small use cases wouldn't bother trademarking such a thing. They would get their own unique one first. One the other hand, I suppose a new type of "trademark troll" could hypothetically arise from paying to trademark these, and then suing you for using them. Although I would like to think that a reasonable defense in court would be, "look I just got it for free from this site, and I willing to stop using it". ... and on the third hand, we see actual out of court settlements for patents that have less to stand on than that. So I guess it's more of a "who gives a damn", and "quit worrying so much" thing.