23 ms·

Logojoy: AI-powered logo creator

1113 points by csallen 10y ago

oliv__ 10y ago
Semi-related but wow: /app.php -- hadn't seen that in a while. It's like bumping into an old friend in the street.
- georgiecasey 10y ago
  so passé right now
  - bdcravens 10y ago
    Logojoy (and many other apps) prove that when it comes to technology, passé is passé
- nacs 10y ago
  You've probably bumped into that friend many times in the street on an almost daily basis without noticing it.. It's just that most sites/frameworks that use PHP use some kind of rewriting so the ".php" isn't visible (CodeIgniter/Wordpress and many others do this automatically).
  - oliv__ 10y ago
    Oh yeah true I forgot about that... of course.
dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
Hey guys - Dawson here (founder) let me know if you have any questions about Logojoy / the story.
- nicklovescode 10y ago
  hey Dawson - would love if you could go into more technical depth on how things work. Cool product!
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Absolutely. I talk a lot about the tech in the IH article, but I'll re-iterate here with as little jargon as possible, focusing on the machine learning part, as I assume that's what you're more interested in. The logo generating algorithm is still in its infancy, so right now it's mostly acting as an idea source for most users. So our logos are just combinations of ingredients — fonts, colors, layouts, symbols, etc. Logojoy uses machine learning specifically to learn which ingredients go better together. It starts with tracking basically everything our users do. We track things like: the inspiration they selected, the logos they favorite, the changes they make to logos (e.g. changing the font), the time spent looking at certain logos, the commonalities between all of their favorited logos, the logos they purchase, and more. We currently track about 80 types of actions. Every day, the learning algorithm reads all these actions and weights each one by how many times it occurred. Because of the structured way it reads actions, it's able to define rules based on "heavy" actions. For example, an action might be defined as "user changed font weight from 100 (light) to 600 (bold)". This action object includes the number of times it occurred, every other preceding action, and all of the logo's ingredients. In this case, let's say the algorithm concluded that every time this happened, the color of the logo was classified as "light". The algorithm would presumably define a rule that says "if the color of the logo is light, do not use a light font weight".
    - cr0sh 10y ago
      Is it just rule-based, or are these "weights" being used to train a classifier, ANN, or some kind of genetic algorithm? Nothing wrong with the former, if it works for ya - but the latter would be interesting, too!
      - deepnotderp 10y ago
        Based on my previous experience, my guess is that the latter would be much too blurry, because generative models tend to only output blurry images.
    - nicklovescode 10y ago
      thanks for your response!
- NicoJuicy 10y ago
  What can you tell us about the algorithms you used or where did you start on learning A.I. ? Interesting approach for logo creation!
  - Jare 10y ago
    I don't know about Logojoy in particular, but every AI begins with some variation of rand(). :)
    - Drdrdrq 10y ago
      Not sure why you were downvoted, in this case that's a real possibility. It's hard to beat rand() for MVP.
    - wolfgang42 10y ago
      From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13067481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13067481 > Yeah, the ML is still in it's infancy... To address that, I built in some more randomness into the algorithm so the initial logo designs can just get the user thinking and then we can get a better sense of their taste as they favorite logos. Without that randomness, the algorithm tries and fails horribly at creating logos. Some variation of rand() indeed!
  - chadpaulson 10y ago
    From the Logojoy How it Works page. The last step isn’t actually AI – it’s a genetic algorithm. As you ‘favorite’ logos, we apply a natural selection type process to generate more accurate logos as you scroll. Each logo is made up of hundreds of ingredients (ie ‘funky font’, ‘bold color’, ‘logo has a symbol’, etc.) – these are called traits in the context of genetic algorithms. As others in the thread have already mentioned, the AI referenced in the previous steps seems more like a rules-based algorithm.
- blktiger 10y ago
  FYI, I thought I'd give it a try today, but it appears to be broken (syntax error in the console).
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Might be a little finicky due to all the HN traffic, please try again, I promise it will work eventually.
- orf 10y ago
  Only works in Chrome...
  - neppo 10y ago
    tried it in firefox and it worked fine. I simply ignored the "chrome only" warning
    - bzbarsky 10y ago
      If true, that just makes the "chrome only" warning even more obnoxious.
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      The tooltips over the color selector's bottom row are cropped in Firefox but not Chrome. The page seems to have more whitespace at the bottom in Chrome.
- katkattac 10y ago
  I tried it, but got a Firefox is not supported message. Why not? What's the missing feature? Otherwise looks pretty cool! Nice business, it's inspiring.
  - jccalhoun 10y ago
    came here to ask the same question
- tswartz 10y ago
  Hi Dawson - What is your background? What's your team consist of?
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    It's just me right now! Hoping to bring on a developer and someone to help out marketing it ASAP. I've been a designer for about 12 years (doing lots of logos) and developing for about 8 years.
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  just tried it and it's stuck at only two logos but it says it's generating more logos :/ would love to know if there's free alternatives like logojoy, I think it's nifty
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Click into a logo, then click back and it should work. Gets stuck sometimes :(
- dceddia 10y ago
  Hey, awesome work! Your story is inspiring :) Having trouble accessing the site though: "logojoy.com" does not work, but "www.logojoy.com" does. Unfortunately Indiehackers links to the one without the "www". Just wanted to let you know.
- kzisme 10y ago
  Might be caused by all the traffic, but received this error when clicking "Make Your Logo" >Connection Failed: 1226
  - mspeedy 10y ago
    I received the same error, but refreshing the page took me straight there.
- dionys 10y ago
  Is it mostly a solo effort? I am releasing my first larger project soon - any tips in terms of release, first places to post to spread the word etc? Also top X things you would have done differently? Also one step that did not quite work for me was picking the icons (it said pick 3 icons you like or something). There were three cutouts and words flying by, but no images and there were no selections available. Here is my browser version: Version 55.0.2883.44 Ubuntu 16.04 (64-bit)
  - gridspy 10y ago
    You are expected to enter text in the text-box above where the text flies by. As a usability feature, I believe that it should auto-type suggestions (which fly by) in the box when you click on them. It doesn't help that the text box is white (#FFF) and the background is very light grey (something like #DDD). Hard to see the box.
    - dionys 10y ago
      Ohh, thanks that was it :). I thought it had something to do with my browser...
- notwhereyouare 10y ago
  So, I went through the whole logo creation process and got stuck at the sign up screen. I don't mind signing up, but when I used last pass to generate a password, I got told it was too long. I only tried to generate one that was ~9 characters long. If you are checking length, might want to put the requirements on that screen
  - ChristianGeek 10y ago
    I got past the signup screen but was then presented with a scrolling list of empty logo options (testing on my iPhone 7).
    - Guest98123 10y ago
      I thought the same, but it turns out you need to type a word into that input box to see the logos. The words scrolling are just examples you could type.
      - jackfrodo 10y ago
        Oh really? I ended up skipping it because I thought they weren't loading. Should at least have a blinking cursor.
  - Osmium 10y ago
    > So, I went through the whole logo creation process and got stuck at the sign up screen. I don't mind signing up ... Yeah, I stopped here too. I'm not going to hand over my details sight-unseen ...
    - 0xfeba 10y ago
      In Chrome, Right-click the edge of that "Sign-up" div, inspect, find and select the containing div if you didn't hit it already, and hit the delete key. I was able to use the site and browse more styles and customize from there.
      - 10y ago
- OrangeTux 10y ago
  Their is a login form on the website on a page without HTTPS. You should change that.
  - binarnosp 10y ago
    Also, no HTTPS when you are supposed to enter the credit card details. This stopped me from buying the logo.
    - devgutt 10y ago
      Actually it is an iframe with https (using stripe)
      - chairmankaga 10y ago
        But if the host traffic is compromised you can serve malicious payment gateways/forms.
        sulam 10y ago
        If the host is compromised HTTPS isn't going to save you.
        novocaine 10y ago
        it will if it's the host /traffic/ that is compromised
- tmaly 10y ago
  Dawson, how did you decide what were the simplest things that needed to be done first?
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Great question. I've been designing logos for 12 years so I have a good sense of what's important: 1. Amazing fonts. This is the low-hanging fruit, and the core of every logo. Some logos are just nice fonts :P 2. Brainstorming and idea exploration. Logojoy is cool because it gets you thinking, and makes it a joy (haha) to explore different fonts, symbols, colors, etc. 3. Presentation. If you look at how the top agencies present logos to clients, it's always with a ton of whitespace, real-life mockups, etc.
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      Fonts are expensive. Are these free fonts?
- abrkn 10y ago
  Looks great! Made a logo in like 5 min that looks amazing. Letting me share it before buying lets me discuss with other people on the team before making a decision.
- wendyeatworld 10y ago
  Love what you guys are doing, I tried it out and ended up with way better logos than any of the designers we found.
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that you are losing money on adwords, unless about 50% of all sales are enterprise level, in which case adwords breaks even. 1800 visits 25% signups * 0.5% sales = 2.25 sales* for $250 spend on adwords.
  - ssharp 10y ago
    He says he gets 5000 visits a day and the 25% / 0.5% stats are related to the 5000, not the 1800 from AdWords. The AdWords visitors likely look different and sometimes it takes experimenting time and money to find an effective way to make a profit on AdWords traffic, so taking a small loss or breaking even in the short term isn't so bad. Acquiring customers has some value besides what they purchase that day as well -- word of mouth, repeat orders, etc. I'm more worried about him thinking he can 2-4x conversion rate "within the next month"!
- poidos 10y ago
  Hey! Just a heads-up, there's a small typo on your landing page-- It says "They chose Logojoy because it's of how easy it is to make a great logo." That "it's" is superfluous. Anyways, great product! Congrats on your success.
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Oh damn. Thanks. How did I not see that. Well, can't update it right now :\
- eswat 10y ago
  Hey Dawson, small world! I worked at RHINO for a bit last year. Were you working on this at that time and what was the time commitment to it back then? You mention two and a half months but given the freelancing I’m guessing it wasn’t full-time effort?
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Hey! Small world for sure. It was 90% of my time, I did a little freelancing for existing clients. I started work on it in September 2016.
- csomar 10y ago
  Signup didn't work for me. I was stuck there.
- shuzchen 10y ago
  Have you looked into whether this is legit on legal usage? You appear to be using noun project icons in these logos, and afaik most logos on the noun project are creative commons with attribution (and I confirmed by selecting a few logos with icons which matched this license on the noun project site). It doesn't appear that you provide any attribution at all to the icon creators wherever you display the icon, and I have no idea what license you deliver to the end user (I haven't went through purchasing a logo - knowing that you're just sticking some text with a noun-project icon doesn't strike me as worth it, honestly). Are you in the clear to be displaying these icons with no attribution, and are the users that buy your icons clear to be putting it on websites and business cards without attribution? I haven't even looked into whether your font usage is appropriate, can you clarify that as well?
  - pwython 10y ago
    > I haven't even looked into whether your font usage is appropriate, can you clarify that as well? I did a test and the first result it gave me was just my company name in the Disney font.
  - mikejarema 10y ago
    The Noun Project has an API plan which allows for usage like this I believe: https://thenounproject.com/developers/ https://thenounproject.com/developers/ Squarespace, Tailor Brands and some other tools are using the API for logo design (without the attribution) much like what Logojoy is doing.
  - hugozap 10y ago
    nounproject has a paid plan with royalty free and no attribution needed.
- atemerev 10y ago
  Fantastic work! Landing experience (result first, registration later), logos seen working in context (blanks, packages, etc), overall smoothness... even the support guy notifying about possible outages during to HN hug of death, everything is so perfect! You are a natural talent, and I envy you. :)
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Haha thank you! It's been a lot of work. PS. how bout that support guy - what a cool dude
- jbhatab 10y ago
  I would love to know more details on the tech side. Did you use a machine learning framework or api? Just would love to know your process as a dev looking to incorporate some machine learning.
- fab1an 10y ago
  Dawson, just came here to just say that I am super impressed with Logojoy, and especially how the onboarding process is both so fantastically smooth AND it actually IS the product! Very cool. On the flipside, this surely has the potential to put thousands of cheapo logo designers out of (that line of) work.
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  Really well done! I was just playing with it and noticed that when I combine an inline icon with a name, the icon hangs way lower than the middle line of the next. Is that a bug? A design choice I don't understand? As another point of feedback, some spinners when searching icons and loading logos would be really nice. Maybe because of the HN effect or maybe for some other reason, but it took a few seconds for lots of actions and I wasn't sure if stuff was supposed to be happening or not. But the product is fantastic and I hope to use it soon.
- JohannesH 10y ago
  I was quite concerned the checkout page didn't use any encryption at all, which caused me to cancel my purchase.
- bayonetz 10y ago
  You talk about the ML being reinforced over time by user actions so you must have suffered from the 'cold start' problem in the beginning. How did you address this? Did you initialize it with your own expert curated rules/weightings? Something else? Have you done any automated mining of the elements in existing "good" company logos (e.g. Nike, AirBnB, etc.). I could see doing something manual too like Music Genome Project or Netflix's internal curated movie characteristics tagging. You'd go through assessing these gold standard logos for qualities like contrast, amount of whitespace, if brand name intersects the artwork, etc and then augment your model with these style rules. Any insights you'd be willing to share would be appreciated!
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Yeah, the ML is still in it's infancy, so we're almost in that cold-start right now. To address that, I built in some more randomness into the algorithm so the initial logo designs can just get the user thinking and then we can get a better sense of their taste as they favorite logos. Without that randomness, the algorithm tries and fails horribly at creating logos. I would love to analyze 'good' logos. I would imagine it's realllllyyy hard to analyze actual pixels. We just analyze actions and pre-created objects (ie. a font choice).
    - chris_va 10y ago
      Actually, maybe not, if you have a large dataset that you are willing to share.
    - ulucs 10y ago
      Analyzing pixels is something ML has gotten much better in the near history :) Even if you have a very simple recommendation engine running behind the scenes, you can throw in some convolutions to utilize your data to create a feature space just like word2vec, which would give you great power to generalize. Even putting in pre-trained networks like VGG16 (instead of training one from scratch) could give you a great headstart on this.
      - deleted 10y ago
- warp 10y ago
  I tried "lûd" as the company name, and that works but many of the logos show "ld". It looks like some of your fonts don't have accented characters.
- dluc 10y ago
  Trying the site with chrome on android, some frustrating issues: * as soon as logos appear the signup form covers all of them, so I can't see the logos. Is it by design? I tried signing up and the wheel keeps spinning, I'll retry later. * Since I tried multiple times, the browser allows to autofill forms. When I do that the js validation fails thinking I haven't entered any char yet. * not sure what to do on the Selectr-icons-screen, I've tried clicking here and there with no results. Luckily I can skip the step :-) * Reloading the page (eg I'm wondering if the server is overloaded and I want to give it a chance) the logo generation restart from scratch. Pls consider keeping state in the URL. Anyhow, great idea :-)
- darkmarmot 10y ago
  This is really cool -- my major issue has been that it doesn't preserve case sensitivity. So logos like eKitten don't seem to work :(
- Washuu 10y ago
  Please stop having Javascript take over the scroll event in the logo generator. I am having to throw my mouse across the room to even barely scroll down the page.
- mortar 10y ago
  Is there a way up prevent the design mock-ups on the preview tab from capitalising the first letter?
- dangero 10y ago
  You mention trying to compete with designers "on the same level", but this seems like a different space than design. I do logos for my clients and most of the work is helping them make choices about what they should do with their logo, not actually drawing it. Have you considered partnering with designers instead of seeing them as competitors?
  - adamredwoods 10y ago
    Designers could easily leverage this as a starting point, then refine the idea more accurately, down to the pixel.
- andruby 10y ago
  Hey Dawson. I'm trying to create an account on logojoy, but it looks like you're blocking emails with a + (plus) sign as invalid. This bugs me, as I like to give each app a unique email address.
- sulam 10y ago
  So I tried it. It seems like almost anything is going to require designer interaction. The logo I ended up with has such low contrast with the background I would be embarrassed to even present it as a mockup, much less treat it like final product. I couldn't get logos in containers, which seems obvious, and very simple to do from what you're already doing. The color picker is suuuuper dumbed down, it'd be nice to see some true color palette options in the vein of Coolors (many other examples exist but that one is representative of what is doable pretty easily and light years better than picking shades of yellow). I could imagine giving this to someone and having them play with it for 30 minutes to get an idea of what they like, but right now unless they want a company name in a single color format (and even then many color options have no legible results) you aren't going to finish anything there. Do you plan to allow editing the stroke color independent of the background? This is the most immediately problematic issue for me, because it means I cannot get a high contrast logo in any light color. Maybe I missed a way to do this?
aus_ 10y ago
> What really worked for me is building a small product. The big picture I have for Logojoy will take years. I was able to get really excited about it because I decided on the simplest version of it. Spend time deciding on the most critical features to launch with, and only build those. Great advice.
- TPCrow 10y ago
  >Once you truly know that every problem can be solved by breaking it down into smaller pieces, nothing can stop you. Also great advice. I've used this mentality to go places I never thought possible.
patja 10y ago
I could not for the life of me figure out what I was supposed to do on the "pick up to 3 symbols" page. And I really tried!
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Yeah - gotta make that more clear. Even my smartest tech friends get confused there.
  - panic 10y ago
    The moving suggestions and dotted-line empty spaces draw your attention away from the text field; maybe clicking on the suggestions/spaces should do something? Even just focusing the text field on click would make a big difference, I think.
- notwhereyouare 10y ago
  I had to hit enter and wait...and wait...and wait
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Hey it's PHP what do you expect
  - tintor 10y ago
    Well, if it doesn't find any icons it will not change anything on the screen. :)
    - jackfrodo 10y ago
      Should probably return a "We couldn't find anything like that :/" so you can know whether it's loading or just came up short.
- teach 10y ago
  Type a word or phrase then press ENTER. (Suggestions are scrolling below.) THEN choose an icon from the suggestions. Clear your typed input, repeat.
NegatioN 10y ago
Really impressive! I feel there's still so many ideas to make a business around if you base it on ML/AI. Being early here could potentially net a huge passive income. Personally I have an idea in mind, and I'm still learning ML slowly on the side. In my eyes this is the true way to independence from "the system" for people who put in enough effort and who have enough knowledge. Why do we not see more of this yet? Is the combination of people who know machine learning, and people who are entrepeneurs so narrow?
- oasijfadosifjo 10y ago
  I'm not sure this is really ML based. It looks more rule based. There are 3 or 4 different layouts and a selection of fonts and font pairings which are likely categorized(probably pulls that from Google fonts etc). I smell snakeoil even if this is a useful product. Putting the AI stamp is probably just for marketing.
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  One thing is the intimidation factor. 3 months ago, I had 0% confidence that I could do anything that even touched ML. I'm still very new to the game, but once I started learning about it, it became much more approachable.
  - meenzu 10y ago
    that is so aweosme to hear! Are there any books/resources that you can recommend that you really enjoyed?
  - acedinlowball 10y ago
    What your product does isn't machine learning. It is even a stretch to call it an artificial intelligence. It's all marketing, self-promotion nonsense
  - downrightmike 10y ago
    Where is the best place to start?
- 10y ago
dceddia 10y ago
If I could offer feedback about the pricing structure -- I think if I didn't know (from the article) that it's free to create unlimited logos, I wouldn't have figured that out by looking at your pricing section. And I know it says "It's free to build unlimited logos. Only pay when you want to download" right there in plain text under the headline, but my eyes skipped over that part. I expected clickable price boxes too. I think it looks so similar to a typical SaaS pricing page that I assumed it works the same way. I don't know how best to fix it, but it might be worth testing different arrangements to make it clearer that it's free to sign up and create a logo.
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Thanks for your feedback, will definitely test different arrangements.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
nilved 10y ago
Their website is broken because of an HTML syntax error. Cases like this remind me that success is often "right place, right time." Notch is another good example of bad engineering going far.
- gxs 10y ago
  This is an especially cynical and petty comment, and that's coming from someone who isn't exactly a glass is half full type of person. As someone who's launched several ventures, this solves a big pain point and it is very apparent that a lot of thought went into putting this together. There is room for improvement, sure, but to dismiss it so casually or attribute its success to dumb luck because of a syntax error really sounds jaded.
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    Gotta agree with ya. There's been times I've wanted a logo or something (mainly for just playing with an idea), and I really stink at artwork. Sometimes I can get something passable out of inkscape - but it is rare.
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Not so much "bad engineering going far" as much as "engineering is less important than you think it is" unless you're a Tesla or Uber.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- nodesocket 10y ago
  Go back to your mom's basement. He built an actual company with actual nice revenue.
  - grzm 10y ago
    Go back to your mom's basement. No need for the insult, regardless of what you're replying to, particularly when you're implying the parent comment is uncalled for.
tzaman 10y ago
What struck me the most is going with the old and tried tools (PHP+MySQL). Nowadays everyone - myself included - is trying to have an excuse to try the sexiest JS framework of the day and most of us fail miserably to deliver anything useful - because of lack of experience or just reinventing the wheel altogether. Old and boring is still sometimes the best.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  There's something to be said for working with the tools you're familiar with but I am also quite happy to have put my PHP development in the rear-view long ago.
- outworlder 10y ago
  That was the first thing I thought when I hit the URL. Here's the thing, I'm guilty as charged. But, analyzing my own behavior, trying the sexiest (JS or otherwise) framework is just an excuse to play/learn it. My subconscious mind never had the intention of actually following through with a product... I hope we can recognize (and avoid) the pattern in the future and use whatever we are more comfortable with to rush the product out of the door.
- old-gregg 10y ago
  ... yet when I tried to use it, it gave me "Firefox is not supported. Use Chrome". Feels like 2001 indeed.
  - tzaman 10y ago
    and yet he's making $15k a month off this project. Imagine the growth possibilities! :)
    - endless1234 10y ago
      $3500 in his first week after media publicity, not $15k per month consistently.
  - outworlder 10y ago
kdamken 10y ago
Super beat that you need to sign up for it to view the logos it produced. Enjoy the fake email I guess.
- pimlottc 10y ago
  The messaging here is a little coy - "Signup to save your progress" But I don't care about saving my progress, I'll just close this and... oh, I can't. So it's not so much, sign up to save your progress, it's sign up, period.
  - gridspy 10y ago
    Yes, this is the point at which I exited also. I believe you'll be losing a lot of people at this point. You should make it possible to close this dialog and store a session cookie so people can come back.
    - weka 10y ago
      I can confirm the moment that signup box popped up... it lost me interest. I have no interest in signing up for something I do not know what it will produce.
    - Geee 10y ago
      Probably not if you really need a logo.
      - Drdrdrq 10y ago
        Yes, I need a logo, but do I need this logo? I haven't seen it yet.
  - AtroxDev 10y ago
    You can just delete the Modal manually from the DOM and try it out without signing up.
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
thom 10y ago
Totally read it as 'AI-powered lego creator' and became terribly confused for a few seconds. But still, someone should create one of those.
- mullen 10y ago
  > 'AI-powered lego creator' AI-Powered Lego creator would be pretty awesome. Make custom lego sets based on various real life things you pick.
  - xorxornop 10y ago
    Well, why not? With modern 3d printers this is definitely possible. Oh, some will be veeeerry funky looking, for sure (not from printing process; from design), but that might just be more entertaining
callmeed 10y ago
Its refreshing to see a startup doing well and not feeling the need to force a subscription on people. I get that SaaS can be a good business model (great, even). On the other hand, I think subscription fatigue is real and you should think hard about your pricing. Dawson is making $15K/month on ONE TIME fees–and fees that are lower than a lot of monthly SaaS plans. I want to see more of this.
- giarc 10y ago
  It's hard to see a subscription model for logo designs though. It's not like you need a new logo each month.
  - dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
    Funny, some designers have actually reached out asking about a subscription for their studio
    - shostack 10y ago
      That's really interesting. In a sense, you can go direct, but the product can save other designers and agencies lots of time. If the client is happy with the results does it matter how the sausage is made as long as they are paying a logo fee and not for fraudulently claimed hours worked? That time they could save is likely much more valuable than just the one time fee, and constant improvements and features for them could very well justify a nice recurring subscription fee.
  - callmeed 10y ago
    http://designpickle.com/ http://designpickle.com/ http://www.thedigitaldesignco.com/graphic-design-subscription/ http://www.thedigitaldesignco.com/graphic-design-subscriptio... not exactly just logos but people seem to try and SaaSify everything.
    - jeremyw 10y ago
      I appreciate your point that some products are really not SaaS-oriented, yet try to be. But your two examples here seem exactly the kind of long-term customer relationships that benefits from SaaS. And may in fact be underutilized. These are high-touch, deep background kind of gigs, rather than impersonal service sites. I want to have an ongoing conversation about my task and I'm willing to pay a retainer++ for that privilege.
alexbeloi 10y ago
Could you go into any more depth about the ML being used? Also, did the site break from traffic? Because I just finished picking out my things and it's been stuck on generating logos for the past 5 minutes.
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  If you click into a logo, then click back out, it should un-stick. I talked about the ML in a comment here and on IH. And yes the site is definitely hurting right now :P
  - thekonqueror 10y ago
    Where are you hosting it?
    - agopaul 10y ago
      Seems heroku $ nslookup logojoy.com Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53 Non-authoritative answer: logojoy.com canonical name = carbonlogo.herokuapp.com. carbonlogo.herokuapp.com canonical name = us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com. Name: us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com Address: 23.21.52.24
hartator 10y ago
Really inspiring story, great product and awesome transparency. Big Kudos for all of this. This guy deserves VC money to make his next big company than most of the current startups we are seeing.
pimlottc 10y ago
Very impressing, hits the sweet spot for projects that need a logo but don't have a big budget. A few comments: * I skipped picking symbols and it generated a logo with a monogram. I wanted to get rid of this so I looked in the Symbol menu and was frustrated not to find it. I eventually found it in "Layout" but that's not the first place I thought to look. * There's a lot greyed text used on controls, which is both hard to read and makes it look like the controls are disabled. e.g. horizontal scroll buttons, uppercase/lowercase toggle, text input boxes * Logos on the preview page load slowly/inconsistently at times, leaving the sample images blank. Perhaps use loading indicators or don't show backgrounds until logo is ready. * reloading the page loses your work (oops)
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, really really appreciate it. I've taken notes! * slow-loading/blank logos is due to HN traffic * reloading the page won't lose your favorites if you have signed up.
samstave 10y ago
Some feedback: I love the UX/UI - but I cant tell it where to put the color/font selections and it only previews with "COMPANY NAME" instead of actually updating with the company name and slogan that you asked me for in the beginning on the selection process... So - I don't know if I like the selection based on that because I wanted the reverse of what it offered (I wanted orange letters with grey background - but it only gives me orange bkgd with grey letters... I would also like a bit better control over the location of the icon. The "saved logo" update pop-up is confusing as when I go back to logo - it doesn't always hold the design I selected... Otherwise this is impressive and awesome... I'd like to use it.
thefalcon 10y ago
As a graphic designer, I implore you to PLEASE develop that good banner ad creation AI product. There are few things and mind numbing as creating 15 variations of the same banner ad over and over and over... My manager and I would both rather have me working on something else.
- going_to_800 10y ago
  Please contact me admin [at] crazyctr (.) com with your ideas. I had a few years ago a product that made banner variations, now I'm looking to revive it.
- count_zero 10y ago
  Have you seen https://www.makethunder.com/ https://www.makethunder.com/, thefalcon? I've not used it, but it looks like it might help. Here's a demo video: https://vimeo.com/163751319 https://vimeo.com/163751319 (warning: loud surf-rock soundtrack).
  - thefalcon 10y ago
    I had not seen it, thank you very much.
k__ 10y ago
I did all the work and then got a registration popup that prevented me from seeing what I was registering for :(
- victor9000 10y ago
  Logojoy assumes that your need for a logo will outweigh the artificial roadblock that they place in the workflow. The only problem is that they've provided no carrots leading up to the roadblock, so I have no motivation to continue. I need to test the service and have confidence in its quality before I sign up for anything. Never mind that I don't actually need a logo, I'm just curating a resource for future use. So I have no innate momentum besides mild curiosity, and I bounced.
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  Same. Developer tools helped me remove it :)
  - tyingq 10y ago
    Yep. Right Click, Inspect then Right Click, Delete element on the modal. Then click the left arrow icon (upper left, next to hamburger), then click "see logos" again.
  - anotheryou 10y ago
    I just wrote garbage
ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
Just a quick feedback: I tried making a logo that used the character ó, and it seemed that some logos rendered that character correctly, but others omitted it. So the word móbile in some logos would display correctly but in others it would show up as mbile.
- Globz 10y ago
  I have the same problem with the word dépôt it will render as dpt instead.
rajandatta 10y ago
Thanks for posting and sharing your story. It was an inspired use of a learning get algorithm and we can all learn from it. Well done.
exolymph 10y ago
A very similar service that's donation-based: http://emblemmatic.org/markmaker/ http://emblemmatic.org/markmaker/ The UX isn't as good and the app isn't as full-fledged.
johns 10y ago
You should expand to recreational sports teams. The logos all follow similar formats and everyone wants one that looks professional but on a limited budget. There are design services that will do it manually but your algorithm approach would work really well for it as well.
listic 10y ago
I was going to say that I could hire a human designer on Upwork to design a logo like that for the same kind of money, but I guess I can't argue with your revenue numbers. Congratulations!
- taytus 10y ago
  Do you have any proof that his revenue number are those? I don't, so...
- sombremesa 10y ago
  Indie Hackers has a vested interest in inaccurate/misleading revenue reporting[1]. Regardless of that, I'm not sure they properly verify the revenue in the first place. I wouldn't go as far as to call the numbers a lie, but I would never use this website as a data point to create a business model. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425
SilverPaladin 10y ago
HN is crashing Logojoy lol!
foopod 10y ago
Do you have a plan of attack to ensure that your machine learning will still be able to make really unique logos while at the same time prioritising pleasing aesthetics? Is there an element of mutation where it will suggest something totally obscure?
PunchTornado 10y ago
like I'm going to install a new browser just to visit a site. no thanks.
innocentoldguy 10y ago
Nice product. I went through the logo creation process, and I was surprised at how nice some of the logos were. The site was simple to understand and easy to use as well. Excellent job! The only criticism I have is that the max password length is too short. I couldn't enter the generated, 30-character passwords I typically use.
amelius 10y ago
I wonder how this compares to Fiverr [1], which actually has human-power behind it, and lets you create a logo for only a few bucks. [1] https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/creative-logo-design https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/creative-l...
- Qwertystop 10y ago
  In that case (based on minimum wage in the US), either you're getting five dollars worth of quality, which is probably even less than this because this process allows extremely fast revisions, or the person doing it is getting massively underpaid. Or they live somewhere that cost-of-living and a typical wage are low enough that $5 for the work makes sense. Or they're using an automated system with an even lower cost-per-unit, which probably overlaps with the first possibility.
module0000 10y ago
Logojoy's page pops up: """ We're experience some technical difficulties right now (looking at you, HN). If you experience any bugs, try a couple more times or sign up and come back a little later to make your logo. Thanks! """
bunchofdweebs 10y ago
Further evidence that most 'tech' boils down to how to sell things faster, sell more things.
- dang 10y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly posting snarky, unsubstantive comments to HN. That's an abuse of this site. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. But please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.
daxfohl 10y ago
Makes the case for an AI-powered bug bounty service. Blockchain if big enough.
throwawaylalala 10y ago
I want to promote your product; do you have affiliate options?
taytus 10y ago
So.... ML/AI to me this looks more like a rand() than anything else. What am I missing?
- dangero 10y ago
  VC Money
wheelerwj 10y ago
Now this is pretty cool. of all the articles indiehackers has posted in the last few weeks, this one is actually innovative and new. very cool!
dperfect 10y ago
> I've been a designer for 12 years or so... I would get frustrated designing logos for small businesses because (a) it was so time-consuming to create 30 mockups, (b) it would take weeks to do those small back-and-forths, and (c) the logo would end up being so simple that I felt like that entire process was a waste... As soon as I had the idea ... I started working on it. I think this is my favorite part of the story. If you've been a designer (or any profession) for over a decade, even with frequent frustrations, it takes a certain kind of humility and introspection to realize that maybe it's not just about your customers being "broken" (by choosing the designs that take the least effort) or needing to find more sophisticated customers who value your talents. Sometimes (ok, usually) it makes more sense to build what people really want rather than giving them what we think they should want. As a developer and entrepreneur, I have to be reminded of that fairly often.
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Really well said.
- robohamburger 10y ago
  I understanding the right blend of what people think they want and what they need is a powerful thing. I imagine it varies based on the problem domain/market.
- zekevermillion 10y ago
  This tool is pretty good! (This from an inexpert small business person, with no design sense -- but still, that describes a lot of potential users.) I've been on the other side of the annoying design client experience, playing the role of annoying client. My old law partners and I asked a design firm to do an identity for us, some 7 years ago now. They spent a LOT of time with us, presented numerous concepts, and eventually the only logo we could agree on was a blue circle with our firm name inside of it. Actually it was a pretty good logo, if I do say so myself! But I could tell it was painful for the designers to hold our hands through this process. The chair of the firm where I started my career liked to talk about the "$300,000 period". The firm had a slogan, something like "We're there for our clients." (minor details changed to protect the guilty) As part of a firm-wide rebranding, they hired an agency to help them update their identity including this slogan. The result was to put a period in the middle, so it became something like "We're there. For our clients." $300k, boom! I played around with the AI logo creator. It is good as a starting point, if you want an logo that looks more or less like other logos in the training set. I suspect that describes 99% of small business users, so it's perfect! Just provide a MOO integration and you'll turn $15k/mo into $100k. I would be interested to see the tool opened up, so you could do logos with arbitrary training data -- but with some hard constraints imposed by the user so it's not just a sea of pornographic aliens cavorting on Dali-inspired worlds. (edit: unless that's what you're going for, of course) At the end of the day, what justifies a big agency fee is partly just the ability to make high-ego corporate clients feel good about their decisions, and to help them sell those decisions within their political environment.
rosstex 10y ago
Does the coder of Logojoy 'own' the logos that its AI produces?
- throwaway89012 10y ago
  Not under US copyright law.
inthaiguy 10y ago
I used it but wasn't too impressed with the quality of the results. Squarespace logo builder is still better. The good news is that that lots of people now know there's a market for this and we should see some impressive products in the pipeline.
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
> Firefox is not supported. We recommend using chrome. No joy for me.
- AckSyn 10y ago
  If people would write to standards w/o crazy tricks or browser specific extras, it wouldn't matter what was used.
diyseguy 10y ago
Hmm.. A sophisticated search and mashup with nice presentation - but ... I don't think I'd call it A.I.
ravins 10y ago
Great work.
WheelsAtLarge 10y ago
Good site, scary site, good because it does a great job at creating a simple logo. I suspect that it can cover the majority of the small companies that want a logo. It certainly does a good job. I tried and created a pretty good one. I've used other similar sites but they've all been created by a team of programmers and system/network administrators over a few years. Scary because it brings into focus how easy it is to replace what could be considered a somewhat complicated job. Yes, it can't replace all graphic designers but it magnifies the power of a few by a large factor. In this case, just one motivated individual. Edit: changed bad to scary, fits better with my thinking, and fixed typos
- craftandhustle 10y ago
  From my perspective, this tool and others like it in areas like web development or stock photography are beneficial. Affordable access to these resources for businesses and individuals will make the world a better (aesthetically speaking) place. When I'm introduced to new clients, I always explain that what they get out of hiring me is my critical thinking and manner of solving problems. Deliverables, be they logos or videos or interactive experiences, are incidental to the strategy. Sometimes clients say all they want is a <logo|image|video>. After listening to their reasoning (financial, time sensitive, short-term need, etc), as designers we can and should offer honest advice and any guidance that comes along with that. I'm often amazed at the public ridicule some designers will put people through for simple inquiries. It might not be the right project for me, and I would thus not recommend anyone else for it, but I could point them to a service like this.
  - dualogy 10y ago
    > Affordable access to these resources for businesses and individuals will make the world a better (aesthetically speaking) place. Either that or it will turn "good typography" into the new "ComicSans". Already in the hip areas of big cities (say, "AirBnb city-trip cities on all continents") you're seeing neat type on Every. Friggin. Barbershop or corner cafe. Still, that's can only drive the "true creatives" to discover and explore the next frontier of aesthetics to then, once again, help "high worth" clients set themselves apart from the crowd, once again. Not the worst dynamic in the world.
mikejarema 10y ago
I'm curious about how the $15k/mo figure is computed. The story reads as though Logojoy more or less launched on Producthunt, which was 7 days ago. And all posts on the blog are dated Nov 15th. Finally the domain itself seems to have been listed on HugeDomains as of Oct 8th [1]. Now maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like the revenue figure is extrapolated from a small window which includes a wave of initial traffic from PH. I'm hoping that the revenue figure is an actual ongoing sustained amount for Dawson's sake (as it is great looking & functioning product, solves a need that I've faced, and for full disclosure I've been putting together something along these lines on the backburner for awhile), but I can't help but feel this is a bit sensationalized based on what I'm seeing here. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161008092541/http://logojoy.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161008092541/http://logojoy.co...
- morgante 10y ago
  That should have been made clearer. I totally thought he had launched a year ago. Still, it's a very impressive achievement.
- brentm 10y ago
  If that is accurate and the number is based on 7 days of revenue at about $500 per day average this smells a lot like growth hacking nonsense.
  - johnny99 10y ago
    Nonsense on stilts. Extrapolating $3500 in your first week of media-driven traffic into a $15k/mo run rate is ridiculous. Calling it "AI-powered" is a whopper too.
    - rtpg 10y ago
      Extrapolation aside, making decisions automatically based off of incoming data points _is_ AI. If the interview is to be believed, almost anything you consider "AI-powered" is within one degree of what is happening here. At least on a conceptual level. AI doesn't need to be magic, it just needs to be making decisions :)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bikamonki 10y ago
They say: don't worry! Jobs taken by AI will be replaced by new ones yet to be invented. Right.
shooray 10y ago
test it
vacri 10y ago
> I've been a designer for 12 years or so ... > Firefox is not supported. We recommend using chrome. 'Best viewed in Netscape Navigator at 800x600'
- guitarbill 10y ago
  From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065810 > Firefox has known issues with svg > I'm sure we can get around them, but not in v1
gbraad 10y ago
The icons seem to come from thenounproject? I saw my own icon (or derivative) being used without attribution.
WhitneyLand 10y ago
I've had better luck with these guys: https://www.tailorbrands.com https://www.tailorbrands.com
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rspeer 10y ago
If you're still reading this: could you please allow + in the e-mail address? I understand why you want me to sign up, but I have no idea how much e-mail you're going to decide to send me, and sending it to a plus-address allows me to filter it on my terms. There's really no reason not to allow the + sign, unless you're going to do something nefarious with my e-mail address and you don't want me to know it was you.
- Qwertystop 10y ago
  How would plus-addressing prevent them doing something nefarious? I would think that if they're selling it, they could strip out anything post-plus in the process easily.
  - rspeer 10y ago
    That is true. So the only reason for disallowing plus signs in addresses is ignorance, not malice.
rekshaw 10y ago
Guys, don't view source. It's a jQuery hell.
blunte 10y ago
I'm happy this guy built something that's generating income, but the results of my attempt to use it just now were really underwhelming. Page after page of COMAPANY NAME on plain cards with different fonts didn't really demonstrate much AI. My takeaway here is that this "story" is not yet a story. Maybe 1-2 years from now, after the product has really developed and evolved, it will be something.
- shaunpud 10y ago
  Yeah, same experience here, there are other sites offering different fonts + 'clipart' to make a rand() logo. Don't see much AI here, still waiting for SkyNet...
soneca 10y ago
I imagine this was upvoted because of Indiehackers credibility, so people just assumed the achievement of $15k/mo was true. Until mikejarema noticed in another comment that the product was launched 15 days ago and the title was BS, I believed too. Now I flagged the story because it is basically a lie. And IndieHackers lost a lot of its credibility for me by now. Other people noticed the AI part is most likely BS too. But that is a less black and white lie than claiming that the creator "makes $15k/mo" when he hasn't made $15k total in the whole product lifetime. Shame on you indiehackers for outright lying (maybe twice) in the title just to get clicks. You gamed HN for this one, but I have the impression that this will hurt you in the future.
tripzilch 10y ago
how to "earn" 15k/mo: "It starts with tracking basically everything our users do." maybe our machines are learning, but these so-called hackers certainly aren't.
shaunpud 10y ago
@csallen Is a bit quiet
thasaleni 10y ago
It would be nice if you keep the selected options in browser session, in case i accidentally navigate away from the site, I don't have to retype everything, and also if i favorite a logo the ability to view logos like it (or based on the choices that led to it)
kelvin0 10y ago
FireFox not supported by LogoJoy. The joy has left me, I really liked the whole idea though.
jaypaulynice 10y ago
I'm not sure if this is a scam. I went through the process and paid and I should get a logo in 30 minutes, but I've been waiting for 12+ hours and still no logo. I email the CEO, which the site says to email at dawson@logojoy.com, yet no response and no sign of a logo in my emails...hmm!

1113 points by csallen 10y ago

oliv__ 10y ago

Semi-related but wow: /app.php -- hadn't seen that in a while. It's like bumping into an old friend in the street.

georgiecasey 10y ago
so passé right now
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Logojoy (and many other apps) prove that when it comes to technology, passé is passé
nacs 10y ago
You've probably bumped into that friend many times in the street on an almost daily basis without noticing it.. It's just that most sites/frameworks that use PHP use some kind of rewriting so the ".php" isn't visible (CodeIgniter/Wordpress and many others do this automatically).
- oliv__ 10y ago
  Oh yeah true I forgot about that... of course.

dawsonwhitfield 10y ago

Hey guys - Dawson here (founder) let me know if you have any questions about Logojoy / the story.

nicklovescode 10y ago
hey Dawson - would love if you could go into more technical depth on how things work. Cool product!
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Absolutely. I talk a lot about the tech in the IH article, but I'll re-iterate here with as little jargon as possible, focusing on the machine learning part, as I assume that's what you're more interested in. The logo generating algorithm is still in its infancy, so right now it's mostly acting as an idea source for most users. So our logos are just combinations of ingredients — fonts, colors, layouts, symbols, etc. Logojoy uses machine learning specifically to learn which ingredients go better together. It starts with tracking basically everything our users do. We track things like: the inspiration they selected, the logos they favorite, the changes they make to logos (e.g. changing the font), the time spent looking at certain logos, the commonalities between all of their favorited logos, the logos they purchase, and more. We currently track about 80 types of actions. Every day, the learning algorithm reads all these actions and weights each one by how many times it occurred. Because of the structured way it reads actions, it's able to define rules based on "heavy" actions. For example, an action might be defined as "user changed font weight from 100 (light) to 600 (bold)". This action object includes the number of times it occurred, every other preceding action, and all of the logo's ingredients. In this case, let's say the algorithm concluded that every time this happened, the color of the logo was classified as "light". The algorithm would presumably define a rule that says "if the color of the logo is light, do not use a light font weight".
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    Is it just rule-based, or are these "weights" being used to train a classifier, ANN, or some kind of genetic algorithm? Nothing wrong with the former, if it works for ya - but the latter would be interesting, too!
    - deepnotderp 10y ago
      Based on my previous experience, my guess is that the latter would be much too blurry, because generative models tend to only output blurry images.
  - nicklovescode 10y ago
    thanks for your response!
NicoJuicy 10y ago
What can you tell us about the algorithms you used or where did you start on learning A.I. ? Interesting approach for logo creation!
- Jare 10y ago
  I don't know about Logojoy in particular, but every AI begins with some variation of rand(). :)
  - Drdrdrq 10y ago
    Not sure why you were downvoted, in this case that's a real possibility. It's hard to beat rand() for MVP.
  - wolfgang42 10y ago
    From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13067481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13067481 > Yeah, the ML is still in it's infancy... To address that, I built in some more randomness into the algorithm so the initial logo designs can just get the user thinking and then we can get a better sense of their taste as they favorite logos. Without that randomness, the algorithm tries and fails horribly at creating logos. Some variation of rand() indeed!
- chadpaulson 10y ago
  From the Logojoy How it Works page. The last step isn’t actually AI – it’s a genetic algorithm. As you ‘favorite’ logos, we apply a natural selection type process to generate more accurate logos as you scroll. Each logo is made up of hundreds of ingredients (ie ‘funky font’, ‘bold color’, ‘logo has a symbol’, etc.) – these are called traits in the context of genetic algorithms. As others in the thread have already mentioned, the AI referenced in the previous steps seems more like a rules-based algorithm.
blktiger 10y ago
FYI, I thought I'd give it a try today, but it appears to be broken (syntax error in the console).
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Might be a little finicky due to all the HN traffic, please try again, I promise it will work eventually.
orf 10y ago
Only works in Chrome...
- neppo 10y ago
  tried it in firefox and it worked fine. I simply ignored the "chrome only" warning
  - bzbarsky 10y ago
    If true, that just makes the "chrome only" warning even more obnoxious.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    The tooltips over the color selector's bottom row are cropped in Firefox but not Chrome. The page seems to have more whitespace at the bottom in Chrome.
katkattac 10y ago
I tried it, but got a Firefox is not supported message. Why not? What's the missing feature? Otherwise looks pretty cool! Nice business, it's inspiring.
- jccalhoun 10y ago
  came here to ask the same question
tswartz 10y ago
Hi Dawson - What is your background? What's your team consist of?
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  It's just me right now! Hoping to bring on a developer and someone to help out marketing it ASAP. I've been a designer for about 12 years (doing lots of logos) and developing for about 8 years.
brilliantcode 10y ago
just tried it and it's stuck at only two logos but it says it's generating more logos :/ would love to know if there's free alternatives like logojoy, I think it's nifty
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Click into a logo, then click back and it should work. Gets stuck sometimes :(
dceddia 10y ago
Hey, awesome work! Your story is inspiring :) Having trouble accessing the site though: "logojoy.com" does not work, but "www.logojoy.com" does. Unfortunately Indiehackers links to the one without the "www". Just wanted to let you know.
kzisme 10y ago
Might be caused by all the traffic, but received this error when clicking "Make Your Logo" >Connection Failed: 1226
- mspeedy 10y ago
  I received the same error, but refreshing the page took me straight there.
dionys 10y ago
Is it mostly a solo effort? I am releasing my first larger project soon - any tips in terms of release, first places to post to spread the word etc? Also top X things you would have done differently? Also one step that did not quite work for me was picking the icons (it said pick 3 icons you like or something). There were three cutouts and words flying by, but no images and there were no selections available. Here is my browser version: Version 55.0.2883.44 Ubuntu 16.04 (64-bit)
- gridspy 10y ago
  You are expected to enter text in the text-box above where the text flies by. As a usability feature, I believe that it should auto-type suggestions (which fly by) in the box when you click on them. It doesn't help that the text box is white (#FFF) and the background is very light grey (something like #DDD). Hard to see the box.
  - dionys 10y ago
    Ohh, thanks that was it :). I thought it had something to do with my browser...
notwhereyouare 10y ago
So, I went through the whole logo creation process and got stuck at the sign up screen. I don't mind signing up, but when I used last pass to generate a password, I got told it was too long. I only tried to generate one that was ~9 characters long. If you are checking length, might want to put the requirements on that screen
- ChristianGeek 10y ago
  I got past the signup screen but was then presented with a scrolling list of empty logo options (testing on my iPhone 7).
  - Guest98123 10y ago
    I thought the same, but it turns out you need to type a word into that input box to see the logos. The words scrolling are just examples you could type.
    - jackfrodo 10y ago
      Oh really? I ended up skipping it because I thought they weren't loading. Should at least have a blinking cursor.
- Osmium 10y ago
  > So, I went through the whole logo creation process and got stuck at the sign up screen. I don't mind signing up ... Yeah, I stopped here too. I'm not going to hand over my details sight-unseen ...
  - 0xfeba 10y ago
    In Chrome, Right-click the edge of that "Sign-up" div, inspect, find and select the containing div if you didn't hit it already, and hit the delete key. I was able to use the site and browse more styles and customize from there.
    - 10y ago
OrangeTux 10y ago
Their is a login form on the website on a page without HTTPS. You should change that.
- binarnosp 10y ago
  Also, no HTTPS when you are supposed to enter the credit card details. This stopped me from buying the logo.
  - devgutt 10y ago
    Actually it is an iframe with https (using stripe)
    - chairmankaga 10y ago
      But if the host traffic is compromised you can serve malicious payment gateways/forms.
      - sulam 10y ago
        If the host is compromised HTTPS isn't going to save you.
        novocaine 10y ago
        it will if it's the host /traffic/ that is compromised
tmaly 10y ago
Dawson, how did you decide what were the simplest things that needed to be done first?
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Great question. I've been designing logos for 12 years so I have a good sense of what's important: 1. Amazing fonts. This is the low-hanging fruit, and the core of every logo. Some logos are just nice fonts :P 2. Brainstorming and idea exploration. Logojoy is cool because it gets you thinking, and makes it a joy (haha) to explore different fonts, symbols, colors, etc. 3. Presentation. If you look at how the top agencies present logos to clients, it's always with a ton of whitespace, real-life mockups, etc.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    Fonts are expensive. Are these free fonts?
abrkn 10y ago
Looks great! Made a logo in like 5 min that looks amazing. Letting me share it before buying lets me discuss with other people on the team before making a decision.
wendyeatworld 10y ago
Love what you guys are doing, I tried it out and ended up with way better logos than any of the designers we found.
wodenokoto 10y ago
My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that you are losing money on adwords, unless about 50% of all sales are enterprise level, in which case adwords breaks even. 1800 visits 25% signups * 0.5% sales = 2.25 sales* for $250 spend on adwords.
- ssharp 10y ago
  He says he gets 5000 visits a day and the 25% / 0.5% stats are related to the 5000, not the 1800 from AdWords. The AdWords visitors likely look different and sometimes it takes experimenting time and money to find an effective way to make a profit on AdWords traffic, so taking a small loss or breaking even in the short term isn't so bad. Acquiring customers has some value besides what they purchase that day as well -- word of mouth, repeat orders, etc. I'm more worried about him thinking he can 2-4x conversion rate "within the next month"!
poidos 10y ago
Hey! Just a heads-up, there's a small typo on your landing page-- It says "They chose Logojoy because it's of how easy it is to make a great logo." That "it's" is superfluous. Anyways, great product! Congrats on your success.
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Oh damn. Thanks. How did I not see that. Well, can't update it right now :\
eswat 10y ago
Hey Dawson, small world! I worked at RHINO for a bit last year. Were you working on this at that time and what was the time commitment to it back then? You mention two and a half months but given the freelancing I’m guessing it wasn’t full-time effort?
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Hey! Small world for sure. It was 90% of my time, I did a little freelancing for existing clients. I started work on it in September 2016.
csomar 10y ago
Signup didn't work for me. I was stuck there.
shuzchen 10y ago
Have you looked into whether this is legit on legal usage? You appear to be using noun project icons in these logos, and afaik most logos on the noun project are creative commons with attribution (and I confirmed by selecting a few logos with icons which matched this license on the noun project site). It doesn't appear that you provide any attribution at all to the icon creators wherever you display the icon, and I have no idea what license you deliver to the end user (I haven't went through purchasing a logo - knowing that you're just sticking some text with a noun-project icon doesn't strike me as worth it, honestly). Are you in the clear to be displaying these icons with no attribution, and are the users that buy your icons clear to be putting it on websites and business cards without attribution? I haven't even looked into whether your font usage is appropriate, can you clarify that as well?
- pwython 10y ago
  > I haven't even looked into whether your font usage is appropriate, can you clarify that as well? I did a test and the first result it gave me was just my company name in the Disney font.
- mikejarema 10y ago
  The Noun Project has an API plan which allows for usage like this I believe: https://thenounproject.com/developers/ https://thenounproject.com/developers/ Squarespace, Tailor Brands and some other tools are using the API for logo design (without the attribution) much like what Logojoy is doing.
- hugozap 10y ago
  nounproject has a paid plan with royalty free and no attribution needed.
atemerev 10y ago
Fantastic work! Landing experience (result first, registration later), logos seen working in context (blanks, packages, etc), overall smoothness... even the support guy notifying about possible outages during to HN hug of death, everything is so perfect! You are a natural talent, and I envy you. :)
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Haha thank you! It's been a lot of work. PS. how bout that support guy - what a cool dude
jbhatab 10y ago
I would love to know more details on the tech side. Did you use a machine learning framework or api? Just would love to know your process as a dev looking to incorporate some machine learning.
fab1an 10y ago
Dawson, just came here to just say that I am super impressed with Logojoy, and especially how the onboarding process is both so fantastically smooth AND it actually IS the product! Very cool. On the flipside, this surely has the potential to put thousands of cheapo logo designers out of (that line of) work.
IgorPartola 10y ago
Really well done! I was just playing with it and noticed that when I combine an inline icon with a name, the icon hangs way lower than the middle line of the next. Is that a bug? A design choice I don't understand? As another point of feedback, some spinners when searching icons and loading logos would be really nice. Maybe because of the HN effect or maybe for some other reason, but it took a few seconds for lots of actions and I wasn't sure if stuff was supposed to be happening or not. But the product is fantastic and I hope to use it soon.
JohannesH 10y ago
I was quite concerned the checkout page didn't use any encryption at all, which caused me to cancel my purchase.
bayonetz 10y ago
You talk about the ML being reinforced over time by user actions so you must have suffered from the 'cold start' problem in the beginning. How did you address this? Did you initialize it with your own expert curated rules/weightings? Something else? Have you done any automated mining of the elements in existing "good" company logos (e.g. Nike, AirBnB, etc.). I could see doing something manual too like Music Genome Project or Netflix's internal curated movie characteristics tagging. You'd go through assessing these gold standard logos for qualities like contrast, amount of whitespace, if brand name intersects the artwork, etc and then augment your model with these style rules. Any insights you'd be willing to share would be appreciated!
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Yeah, the ML is still in it's infancy, so we're almost in that cold-start right now. To address that, I built in some more randomness into the algorithm so the initial logo designs can just get the user thinking and then we can get a better sense of their taste as they favorite logos. Without that randomness, the algorithm tries and fails horribly at creating logos. I would love to analyze 'good' logos. I would imagine it's realllllyyy hard to analyze actual pixels. We just analyze actions and pre-created objects (ie. a font choice).
  - chris_va 10y ago
    Actually, maybe not, if you have a large dataset that you are willing to share.
  - ulucs 10y ago
    Analyzing pixels is something ML has gotten much better in the near history :) Even if you have a very simple recommendation engine running behind the scenes, you can throw in some convolutions to utilize your data to create a feature space just like word2vec, which would give you great power to generalize. Even putting in pre-trained networks like VGG16 (instead of training one from scratch) could give you a great headstart on this.
    - deleted 10y ago
warp 10y ago
I tried "lûd" as the company name, and that works but many of the logos show "ld". It looks like some of your fonts don't have accented characters.
dluc 10y ago
Trying the site with chrome on android, some frustrating issues: * as soon as logos appear the signup form covers all of them, so I can't see the logos. Is it by design? I tried signing up and the wheel keeps spinning, I'll retry later. * Since I tried multiple times, the browser allows to autofill forms. When I do that the js validation fails thinking I haven't entered any char yet. * not sure what to do on the Selectr-icons-screen, I've tried clicking here and there with no results. Luckily I can skip the step :-) * Reloading the page (eg I'm wondering if the server is overloaded and I want to give it a chance) the logo generation restart from scratch. Pls consider keeping state in the URL. Anyhow, great idea :-)
darkmarmot 10y ago
This is really cool -- my major issue has been that it doesn't preserve case sensitivity. So logos like eKitten don't seem to work :(
Washuu 10y ago
Please stop having Javascript take over the scroll event in the logo generator. I am having to throw my mouse across the room to even barely scroll down the page.
mortar 10y ago
Is there a way up prevent the design mock-ups on the preview tab from capitalising the first letter?
dangero 10y ago
You mention trying to compete with designers "on the same level", but this seems like a different space than design. I do logos for my clients and most of the work is helping them make choices about what they should do with their logo, not actually drawing it. Have you considered partnering with designers instead of seeing them as competitors?
- adamredwoods 10y ago
  Designers could easily leverage this as a starting point, then refine the idea more accurately, down to the pixel.
andruby 10y ago
Hey Dawson. I'm trying to create an account on logojoy, but it looks like you're blocking emails with a + (plus) sign as invalid. This bugs me, as I like to give each app a unique email address.
sulam 10y ago
So I tried it. It seems like almost anything is going to require designer interaction. The logo I ended up with has such low contrast with the background I would be embarrassed to even present it as a mockup, much less treat it like final product. I couldn't get logos in containers, which seems obvious, and very simple to do from what you're already doing. The color picker is suuuuper dumbed down, it'd be nice to see some true color palette options in the vein of Coolors (many other examples exist but that one is representative of what is doable pretty easily and light years better than picking shades of yellow). I could imagine giving this to someone and having them play with it for 30 minutes to get an idea of what they like, but right now unless they want a company name in a single color format (and even then many color options have no legible results) you aren't going to finish anything there. Do you plan to allow editing the stroke color independent of the background? This is the most immediately problematic issue for me, because it means I cannot get a high contrast logo in any light color. Maybe I missed a way to do this?

aus_ 10y ago

> What really worked for me is building a small product. The big picture I have for Logojoy will take years. I was able to get really excited about it because I decided on the simplest version of it. Spend time deciding on the most critical features to launch with, and only build those. Great advice.

TPCrow 10y ago
>Once you truly know that every problem can be solved by breaking it down into smaller pieces, nothing can stop you. Also great advice. I've used this mentality to go places I never thought possible.

patja 10y ago

I could not for the life of me figure out what I was supposed to do on the "pick up to 3 symbols" page. And I really tried!

dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
Yeah - gotta make that more clear. Even my smartest tech friends get confused there.
- panic 10y ago
  The moving suggestions and dotted-line empty spaces draw your attention away from the text field; maybe clicking on the suggestions/spaces should do something? Even just focusing the text field on click would make a big difference, I think.
notwhereyouare 10y ago
I had to hit enter and wait...and wait...and wait
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Hey it's PHP what do you expect
- tintor 10y ago
  Well, if it doesn't find any icons it will not change anything on the screen. :)
  - jackfrodo 10y ago
    Should probably return a "We couldn't find anything like that :/" so you can know whether it's loading or just came up short.
teach 10y ago
Type a word or phrase then press ENTER. (Suggestions are scrolling below.) THEN choose an icon from the suggestions. Clear your typed input, repeat.

NegatioN 10y ago

Really impressive! I feel there's still so many ideas to make a business around if you base it on ML/AI. Being early here could potentially net a huge passive income. Personally I have an idea in mind, and I'm still learning ML slowly on the side. In my eyes this is the true way to independence from "the system" for people who put in enough effort and who have enough knowledge. Why do we not see more of this yet? Is the combination of people who know machine learning, and people who are entrepeneurs so narrow?

oasijfadosifjo 10y ago
I'm not sure this is really ML based. It looks more rule based. There are 3 or 4 different layouts and a selection of fonts and font pairings which are likely categorized(probably pulls that from Google fonts etc). I smell snakeoil even if this is a useful product. Putting the AI stamp is probably just for marketing.
dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
One thing is the intimidation factor. 3 months ago, I had 0% confidence that I could do anything that even touched ML. I'm still very new to the game, but once I started learning about it, it became much more approachable.
- meenzu 10y ago
  that is so aweosme to hear! Are there any books/resources that you can recommend that you really enjoyed?
- acedinlowball 10y ago
  What your product does isn't machine learning. It is even a stretch to call it an artificial intelligence. It's all marketing, self-promotion nonsense
- downrightmike 10y ago
  Where is the best place to start?
10y ago

dceddia 10y ago

If I could offer feedback about the pricing structure -- I think if I didn't know (from the article) that it's free to create unlimited logos, I wouldn't have figured that out by looking at your pricing section. And I know it says "It's free to build unlimited logos. Only pay when you want to download" right there in plain text under the headline, but my eyes skipped over that part. I expected clickable price boxes too. I think it looks so similar to a typical SaaS pricing page that I assumed it works the same way. I don't know how best to fix it, but it might be worth testing different arrangements to make it clearer that it's free to sign up and create a logo.

dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
Thanks for your feedback, will definitely test different arrangements.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

nilved 10y ago

Their website is broken because of an HTML syntax error. Cases like this remind me that success is often "right place, right time." Notch is another good example of bad engineering going far.

gxs 10y ago
This is an especially cynical and petty comment, and that's coming from someone who isn't exactly a glass is half full type of person. As someone who's launched several ventures, this solves a big pain point and it is very apparent that a lot of thought went into putting this together. There is room for improvement, sure, but to dismiss it so casually or attribute its success to dumb luck because of a syntax error really sounds jaded.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  Gotta agree with ya. There's been times I've wanted a logo or something (mainly for just playing with an idea), and I really stink at artwork. Sometimes I can get something passable out of inkscape - but it is rare.
bdcravens 10y ago
Not so much "bad engineering going far" as much as "engineering is less important than you think it is" unless you're a Tesla or Uber.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
nodesocket 10y ago
Go back to your mom's basement. He built an actual company with actual nice revenue.
- grzm 10y ago
  Go back to your mom's basement. No need for the insult, regardless of what you're replying to, particularly when you're implying the parent comment is uncalled for.

tzaman 10y ago

What struck me the most is going with the old and tried tools (PHP+MySQL). Nowadays everyone - myself included - is trying to have an excuse to try the sexiest JS framework of the day and most of us fail miserably to deliver anything useful - because of lack of experience or just reinventing the wheel altogether. Old and boring is still sometimes the best.

wavefunction 10y ago
There's something to be said for working with the tools you're familiar with but I am also quite happy to have put my PHP development in the rear-view long ago.
outworlder 10y ago
That was the first thing I thought when I hit the URL. Here's the thing, I'm guilty as charged. But, analyzing my own behavior, trying the sexiest (JS or otherwise) framework is just an excuse to play/learn it. My subconscious mind never had the intention of actually following through with a product... I hope we can recognize (and avoid) the pattern in the future and use whatever we are more comfortable with to rush the product out of the door.
old-gregg 10y ago
... yet when I tried to use it, it gave me "Firefox is not supported. Use Chrome". Feels like 2001 indeed.
- tzaman 10y ago
  and yet he's making $15k a month off this project. Imagine the growth possibilities! :)
  - endless1234 10y ago
    $3500 in his first week after media publicity, not $15k per month consistently.
- outworlder 10y ago

kdamken 10y ago

Super beat that you need to sign up for it to view the logos it produced. Enjoy the fake email I guess.

pimlottc 10y ago
The messaging here is a little coy - "Signup to save your progress" But I don't care about saving my progress, I'll just close this and... oh, I can't. So it's not so much, sign up to save your progress, it's sign up, period.
- gridspy 10y ago
  Yes, this is the point at which I exited also. I believe you'll be losing a lot of people at this point. You should make it possible to close this dialog and store a session cookie so people can come back.
  - weka 10y ago
    I can confirm the moment that signup box popped up... it lost me interest. I have no interest in signing up for something I do not know what it will produce.
  - Geee 10y ago
    Probably not if you really need a logo.
    - Drdrdrq 10y ago
      Yes, I need a logo, but do I need this logo? I haven't seen it yet.
- AtroxDev 10y ago
  You can just delete the Modal manually from the DOM and try it out without signing up.
dawsonwhitfield 10y ago

thom 10y ago

Totally read it as 'AI-powered lego creator' and became terribly confused for a few seconds. But still, someone should create one of those.

mullen 10y ago
> 'AI-powered lego creator' AI-Powered Lego creator would be pretty awesome. Make custom lego sets based on various real life things you pick.
- xorxornop 10y ago
  Well, why not? With modern 3d printers this is definitely possible. Oh, some will be veeeerry funky looking, for sure (not from printing process; from design), but that might just be more entertaining

callmeed 10y ago

Its refreshing to see a startup doing well and not feeling the need to force a subscription on people. I get that SaaS can be a good business model (great, even). On the other hand, I think subscription fatigue is real and you should think hard about your pricing. Dawson is making $15K/month on ONE TIME fees–and fees that are lower than a lot of monthly SaaS plans. I want to see more of this.

giarc 10y ago
It's hard to see a subscription model for logo designs though. It's not like you need a new logo each month.
- dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
  Funny, some designers have actually reached out asking about a subscription for their studio
  - shostack 10y ago
    That's really interesting. In a sense, you can go direct, but the product can save other designers and agencies lots of time. If the client is happy with the results does it matter how the sausage is made as long as they are paying a logo fee and not for fraudulently claimed hours worked? That time they could save is likely much more valuable than just the one time fee, and constant improvements and features for them could very well justify a nice recurring subscription fee.
- callmeed 10y ago
  http://designpickle.com/ http://designpickle.com/ http://www.thedigitaldesignco.com/graphic-design-subscription/ http://www.thedigitaldesignco.com/graphic-design-subscriptio... not exactly just logos but people seem to try and SaaSify everything.
  - jeremyw 10y ago
    I appreciate your point that some products are really not SaaS-oriented, yet try to be. But your two examples here seem exactly the kind of long-term customer relationships that benefits from SaaS. And may in fact be underutilized. These are high-touch, deep background kind of gigs, rather than impersonal service sites. I want to have an ongoing conversation about my task and I'm willing to pay a retainer++ for that privilege.

alexbeloi 10y ago

Could you go into any more depth about the ML being used? Also, did the site break from traffic? Because I just finished picking out my things and it's been stuck on generating logos for the past 5 minutes.

dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
If you click into a logo, then click back out, it should un-stick. I talked about the ML in a comment here and on IH. And yes the site is definitely hurting right now :P
- thekonqueror 10y ago
  Where are you hosting it?
  - agopaul 10y ago
    Seems heroku $ nslookup logojoy.com Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53 Non-authoritative answer: logojoy.com canonical name = carbonlogo.herokuapp.com. carbonlogo.herokuapp.com canonical name = us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com. Name: us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com Address: 23.21.52.24

hartator 10y ago

Really inspiring story, great product and awesome transparency. Big Kudos for all of this. This guy deserves VC money to make his next big company than most of the current startups we are seeing.

pimlottc 10y ago

Very impressing, hits the sweet spot for projects that need a logo but don't have a big budget. A few comments: * I skipped picking symbols and it generated a logo with a monogram. I wanted to get rid of this so I looked in the Symbol menu and was frustrated not to find it. I eventually found it in "Layout" but that's not the first place I thought to look. * There's a lot greyed text used on controls, which is both hard to read and makes it look like the controls are disabled. e.g. horizontal scroll buttons, uppercase/lowercase toggle, text input boxes * Logos on the preview page load slowly/inconsistently at times, leaving the sample images blank. Perhaps use loading indicators or don't show backgrounds until logo is ready. * reloading the page loses your work (oops)

dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
Thanks for the feedback, really really appreciate it. I've taken notes! * slow-loading/blank logos is due to HN traffic * reloading the page won't lose your favorites if you have signed up.

samstave 10y ago

Some feedback: I love the UX/UI - but I cant tell it where to put the color/font selections and it only previews with "COMPANY NAME" instead of actually updating with the company name and slogan that you asked me for in the beginning on the selection process... So - I don't know if I like the selection based on that because I wanted the reverse of what it offered (I wanted orange letters with grey background - but it only gives me orange bkgd with grey letters... I would also like a bit better control over the location of the icon. The "saved logo" update pop-up is confusing as when I go back to logo - it doesn't always hold the design I selected... Otherwise this is impressive and awesome... I'd like to use it.

thefalcon 10y ago

As a graphic designer, I implore you to PLEASE develop that good banner ad creation AI product. There are few things and mind numbing as creating 15 variations of the same banner ad over and over and over... My manager and I would both rather have me working on something else.

going_to_800 10y ago
Please contact me admin [at] crazyctr (.) com with your ideas. I had a few years ago a product that made banner variations, now I'm looking to revive it.
count_zero 10y ago
Have you seen https://www.makethunder.com/ https://www.makethunder.com/, thefalcon? I've not used it, but it looks like it might help. Here's a demo video: https://vimeo.com/163751319 https://vimeo.com/163751319 (warning: loud surf-rock soundtrack).
- thefalcon 10y ago
  I had not seen it, thank you very much.

k__ 10y ago

I did all the work and then got a registration popup that prevented me from seeing what I was registering for :(

victor9000 10y ago
Logojoy assumes that your need for a logo will outweigh the artificial roadblock that they place in the workflow. The only problem is that they've provided no carrots leading up to the roadblock, so I have no motivation to continue. I need to test the service and have confidence in its quality before I sign up for anything. Never mind that I don't actually need a logo, I'm just curating a resource for future use. So I have no innate momentum besides mild curiosity, and I bounced.
IgorPartola 10y ago
Same. Developer tools helped me remove it :)
- tyingq 10y ago
  Yep. Right Click, Inspect then Right Click, Delete element on the modal. Then click the left arrow icon (upper left, next to hamburger), then click "see logos" again.
- anotheryou 10y ago
  I just wrote garbage

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago

Just a quick feedback: I tried making a logo that used the character ó, and it seemed that some logos rendered that character correctly, but others omitted it. So the word móbile in some logos would display correctly but in others it would show up as mbile.

Globz 10y ago
I have the same problem with the word dépôt it will render as dpt instead.

rajandatta 10y ago

Thanks for posting and sharing your story. It was an inspired use of a learning get algorithm and we can all learn from it. Well done.

exolymph 10y ago

A very similar service that's donation-based: http://emblemmatic.org/markmaker/ http://emblemmatic.org/markmaker/ The UX isn't as good and the app isn't as full-fledged.

johns 10y ago

You should expand to recreational sports teams. The logos all follow similar formats and everyone wants one that looks professional but on a limited budget. There are design services that will do it manually but your algorithm approach would work really well for it as well.

listic 10y ago

I was going to say that I could hire a human designer on Upwork to design a logo like that for the same kind of money, but I guess I can't argue with your revenue numbers. Congratulations!

taytus 10y ago
Do you have any proof that his revenue number are those? I don't, so...
sombremesa 10y ago
Indie Hackers has a vested interest in inaccurate/misleading revenue reporting[1]. Regardless of that, I'm not sure they properly verify the revenue in the first place. I wouldn't go as far as to call the numbers a lie, but I would never use this website as a data point to create a business model. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425

SilverPaladin 10y ago

HN is crashing Logojoy lol!

foopod 10y ago

Do you have a plan of attack to ensure that your machine learning will still be able to make really unique logos while at the same time prioritising pleasing aesthetics? Is there an element of mutation where it will suggest something totally obscure?

PunchTornado 10y ago

like I'm going to install a new browser just to visit a site. no thanks.

innocentoldguy 10y ago

Nice product. I went through the logo creation process, and I was surprised at how nice some of the logos were. The site was simple to understand and easy to use as well. Excellent job! The only criticism I have is that the max password length is too short. I couldn't enter the generated, 30-character passwords I typically use.

amelius 10y ago

I wonder how this compares to Fiverr [1], which actually has human-power behind it, and lets you create a logo for only a few bucks. [1] https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/creative-logo-design https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/creative-l...

Qwertystop 10y ago
In that case (based on minimum wage in the US), either you're getting five dollars worth of quality, which is probably even less than this because this process allows extremely fast revisions, or the person doing it is getting massively underpaid. Or they live somewhere that cost-of-living and a typical wage are low enough that $5 for the work makes sense. Or they're using an automated system with an even lower cost-per-unit, which probably overlaps with the first possibility.

module0000 10y ago

Logojoy's page pops up: """ We're experience some technical difficulties right now (looking at you, HN). If you experience any bugs, try a couple more times or sign up and come back a little later to make your logo. Thanks! """

bunchofdweebs 10y ago

Further evidence that most 'tech' boils down to how to sell things faster, sell more things.

dang 10y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting snarky, unsubstantive comments to HN. That's an abuse of this site. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. But please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

daxfohl 10y ago

Makes the case for an AI-powered bug bounty service. Blockchain if big enough.

throwawaylalala 10y ago

I want to promote your product; do you have affiliate options?

taytus 10y ago

So.... ML/AI to me this looks more like a rand() than anything else. What am I missing?

dangero 10y ago
VC Money

wheelerwj 10y ago

Now this is pretty cool. of all the articles indiehackers has posted in the last few weeks, this one is actually innovative and new. very cool!

dperfect 10y ago

> I've been a designer for 12 years or so... I would get frustrated designing logos for small businesses because (a) it was so time-consuming to create 30 mockups, (b) it would take weeks to do those small back-and-forths, and (c) the logo would end up being so simple that I felt like that entire process was a waste... As soon as I had the idea ... I started working on it. I think this is my favorite part of the story. If you've been a designer (or any profession) for over a decade, even with frequent frustrations, it takes a certain kind of humility and introspection to realize that maybe it's not just about your customers being "broken" (by choosing the designs that take the least effort) or needing to find more sophisticated customers who value your talents. Sometimes (ok, usually) it makes more sense to build what people really want rather than giving them what we think they should want. As a developer and entrepreneur, I have to be reminded of that fairly often.

dawsonwhitfield 10y ago
Really well said.
robohamburger 10y ago
I understanding the right blend of what people think they want and what they need is a powerful thing. I imagine it varies based on the problem domain/market.
zekevermillion 10y ago
This tool is pretty good! (This from an inexpert small business person, with no design sense -- but still, that describes a lot of potential users.) I've been on the other side of the annoying design client experience, playing the role of annoying client. My old law partners and I asked a design firm to do an identity for us, some 7 years ago now. They spent a LOT of time with us, presented numerous concepts, and eventually the only logo we could agree on was a blue circle with our firm name inside of it. Actually it was a pretty good logo, if I do say so myself! But I could tell it was painful for the designers to hold our hands through this process. The chair of the firm where I started my career liked to talk about the "$300,000 period". The firm had a slogan, something like "We're there for our clients." (minor details changed to protect the guilty) As part of a firm-wide rebranding, they hired an agency to help them update their identity including this slogan. The result was to put a period in the middle, so it became something like "We're there. For our clients." $300k, boom! I played around with the AI logo creator. It is good as a starting point, if you want an logo that looks more or less like other logos in the training set. I suspect that describes 99% of small business users, so it's perfect! Just provide a MOO integration and you'll turn $15k/mo into $100k. I would be interested to see the tool opened up, so you could do logos with arbitrary training data -- but with some hard constraints imposed by the user so it's not just a sea of pornographic aliens cavorting on Dali-inspired worlds. (edit: unless that's what you're going for, of course) At the end of the day, what justifies a big agency fee is partly just the ability to make high-ego corporate clients feel good about their decisions, and to help them sell those decisions within their political environment.

rosstex 10y ago

Does the coder of Logojoy 'own' the logos that its AI produces?

throwaway89012 10y ago
Not under US copyright law.

inthaiguy 10y ago

I used it but wasn't too impressed with the quality of the results. Squarespace logo builder is still better. The good news is that that lots of people now know there's a market for this and we should see some impressive products in the pipeline.

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

> Firefox is not supported. We recommend using chrome. No joy for me.

AckSyn 10y ago
If people would write to standards w/o crazy tricks or browser specific extras, it wouldn't matter what was used.

diyseguy 10y ago

Hmm.. A sophisticated search and mashup with nice presentation - but ... I don't think I'd call it A.I.

ravins 10y ago

Great work.

WheelsAtLarge 10y ago

Good site, scary site, good because it does a great job at creating a simple logo. I suspect that it can cover the majority of the small companies that want a logo. It certainly does a good job. I tried and created a pretty good one. I've used other similar sites but they've all been created by a team of programmers and system/network administrators over a few years. Scary because it brings into focus how easy it is to replace what could be considered a somewhat complicated job. Yes, it can't replace all graphic designers but it magnifies the power of a few by a large factor. In this case, just one motivated individual. Edit: changed bad to scary, fits better with my thinking, and fixed typos

craftandhustle 10y ago
From my perspective, this tool and others like it in areas like web development or stock photography are beneficial. Affordable access to these resources for businesses and individuals will make the world a better (aesthetically speaking) place. When I'm introduced to new clients, I always explain that what they get out of hiring me is my critical thinking and manner of solving problems. Deliverables, be they logos or videos or interactive experiences, are incidental to the strategy. Sometimes clients say all they want is a <logo|image|video>. After listening to their reasoning (financial, time sensitive, short-term need, etc), as designers we can and should offer honest advice and any guidance that comes along with that. I'm often amazed at the public ridicule some designers will put people through for simple inquiries. It might not be the right project for me, and I would thus not recommend anyone else for it, but I could point them to a service like this.
- dualogy 10y ago
  > Affordable access to these resources for businesses and individuals will make the world a better (aesthetically speaking) place. Either that or it will turn "good typography" into the new "ComicSans". Already in the hip areas of big cities (say, "AirBnb city-trip cities on all continents") you're seeing neat type on Every. Friggin. Barbershop or corner cafe. Still, that's can only drive the "true creatives" to discover and explore the next frontier of aesthetics to then, once again, help "high worth" clients set themselves apart from the crowd, once again. Not the worst dynamic in the world.

mikejarema 10y ago

I'm curious about how the $15k/mo figure is computed. The story reads as though Logojoy more or less launched on Producthunt, which was 7 days ago. And all posts on the blog are dated Nov 15th. Finally the domain itself seems to have been listed on HugeDomains as of Oct 8th [1]. Now maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like the revenue figure is extrapolated from a small window which includes a wave of initial traffic from PH. I'm hoping that the revenue figure is an actual ongoing sustained amount for Dawson's sake (as it is great looking & functioning product, solves a need that I've faced, and for full disclosure I've been putting together something along these lines on the backburner for awhile), but I can't help but feel this is a bit sensationalized based on what I'm seeing here. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161008092541/http://logojoy.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161008092541/http://logojoy.co...

morgante 10y ago
That should have been made clearer. I totally thought he had launched a year ago. Still, it's a very impressive achievement.
brentm 10y ago
If that is accurate and the number is based on 7 days of revenue at about $500 per day average this smells a lot like growth hacking nonsense.
- johnny99 10y ago
  Nonsense on stilts. Extrapolating $3500 in your first week of media-driven traffic into a $15k/mo run rate is ridiculous. Calling it "AI-powered" is a whopper too.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    Extrapolation aside, making decisions automatically based off of incoming data points _is_ AI. If the interview is to be believed, almost anything you consider "AI-powered" is within one degree of what is happening here. At least on a conceptual level. AI doesn't need to be magic, it just needs to be making decisions :)

deleted 10y ago

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bikamonki 10y ago

They say: don't worry! Jobs taken by AI will be replaced by new ones yet to be invented. Right.

shooray 10y ago

test it

vacri 10y ago

> I've been a designer for 12 years or so ... > Firefox is not supported. We recommend using chrome. 'Best viewed in Netscape Navigator at 800x600'

guitarbill 10y ago
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065810 > Firefox has known issues with svg > I'm sure we can get around them, but not in v1

gbraad 10y ago

The icons seem to come from thenounproject? I saw my own icon (or derivative) being used without attribution.

WhitneyLand 10y ago

I've had better luck with these guys: https://www.tailorbrands.com https://www.tailorbrands.com

deleted 10y ago

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rspeer 10y ago

If you're still reading this: could you please allow + in the e-mail address? I understand why you want me to sign up, but I have no idea how much e-mail you're going to decide to send me, and sending it to a plus-address allows me to filter it on my terms. There's really no reason not to allow the + sign, unless you're going to do something nefarious with my e-mail address and you don't want me to know it was you.

Qwertystop 10y ago
How would plus-addressing prevent them doing something nefarious? I would think that if they're selling it, they could strip out anything post-plus in the process easily.
- rspeer 10y ago
  That is true. So the only reason for disallowing plus signs in addresses is ignorance, not malice.

rekshaw 10y ago

Guys, don't view source. It's a jQuery hell.

blunte 10y ago

I'm happy this guy built something that's generating income, but the results of my attempt to use it just now were really underwhelming. Page after page of COMAPANY NAME on plain cards with different fonts didn't really demonstrate much AI. My takeaway here is that this "story" is not yet a story. Maybe 1-2 years from now, after the product has really developed and evolved, it will be something.

shaunpud 10y ago
Yeah, same experience here, there are other sites offering different fonts + 'clipart' to make a rand() logo. Don't see much AI here, still waiting for SkyNet...

soneca 10y ago

I imagine this was upvoted because of Indiehackers credibility, so people just assumed the achievement of $15k/mo was true. Until mikejarema noticed in another comment that the product was launched 15 days ago and the title was BS, I believed too. Now I flagged the story because it is basically a lie. And IndieHackers lost a lot of its credibility for me by now. Other people noticed the AI part is most likely BS too. But that is a less black and white lie than claiming that the creator "makes $15k/mo" when he hasn't made $15k total in the whole product lifetime. Shame on you indiehackers for outright lying (maybe twice) in the title just to get clicks. You gamed HN for this one, but I have the impression that this will hurt you in the future.

tripzilch 10y ago

how to "earn" 15k/mo: "It starts with tracking basically everything our users do." maybe our machines are learning, but these so-called hackers certainly aren't.

shaunpud 10y ago

@csallen Is a bit quiet

thasaleni 10y ago

It would be nice if you keep the selected options in browser session, in case i accidentally navigate away from the site, I don't have to retype everything, and also if i favorite a logo the ability to view logos like it (or based on the choices that led to it)

kelvin0 10y ago

FireFox not supported by LogoJoy. The joy has left me, I really liked the whole idea though.

jaypaulynice 10y ago

I'm not sure if this is a scam. I went through the process and paid and I should get a logo in 30 minutes, but I've been waiting for 12+ hours and still no logo. I email the CEO, which the site says to email at dawson@logojoy.com, yet no response and no sign of a logo in my emails...hmm!