5 ms·

Show HN: I made a dead simple logo maker

74 points by marclou 3y ago

jasongill 3y ago
Looks great. I was an early entrant into the "logo maker" space, which was very hot a few years ago when someone realized that it was a great way to get leads for small businesses who were just in the first days of their journey as a company. Unfortunately since then, the market has become saturated with competitors and other business-services providers that have free logo makers, so it's hard to rank or really get much traction with a new logo maker. Abuse is another problem - people on Fiverr sell "professional logo design" and then just use your tool to make a logo (if you could consider that to be abuse). If this is a nice little bonus feature for your existing users, however, it is very slick. Good work!
- marclou 3y ago
  [dead]
finger 3y ago
The AI feature seems to just generate random icons unrelating to the input.
- marclou 3y ago
  What was your input? will check
  - RankingMember 3y ago
    not parent, but I entered "police station" as a test and got a bunch of unrelated icons
    - mtillman 3y ago
      Don’t do his qa for him: https://x.com/marc_louvion/status/1720059433580130372?s=20 https://x.com/marc_louvion/status/1720059433580130372?s=20
      - chewmieser 3y ago
        - I don't test my code - I don't use git branches - I don't change my tech stack Weird brags...
        morkalork 3y ago
        Lmao
      - Etheryte 3y ago
        > I built 17 startups in 2 years. That's phrased like a brag, but I'm not sure what's so cool about making 17 failed businesses in 2 years. Working through failure can lead to success, yes, but simply failing many times over does not mean you'll automatically succeed at one point.
        jacobyoder 3y ago
        And yet... not trying (and often failing) will pretty much guarantee no success at all. It's a tough nut to crack.
  - system16 3y ago
    Not OP but I entered “real estate” and got an ear with hearing aid, a terminal, a bug with a play button, and a bowl of soup with steam.
  - felixarba 3y ago
    I entered "bakery" and got dice, a bug, and something I can't recognize
  - themanmaran 3y ago
    Same. Entered "database transforms" and got calendar icons.
  - CivBase 3y ago
    I tried "Dark logo for a dice game" and I got H4, clouds, and the icon for looping the same song over and over.
  - stockholm 3y ago
    I entered “cursor” and it gave me a clipboard
  - Double_a_92 3y ago
    Literally the placeholder text (the ice-cream shop) doesn't produce any sensible results. Shipped too fast I guess ._.
  - tecleandor 3y ago
    I did a quick test for a logo and the answer seemed more random than related: https://imgur.com/a/a93s0t5 https://imgur.com/a/a93s0t5
- izzydata 3y ago
  Same. I tried a ton of things such as "Robot", "Banana", "Cheese", "Flower", etc.. and got things that were completely random.
- dylan604 3y ago
  with a domain like shipfa.st, makes me think of the old saying "good, cheap, fast" pick two. since the thing is free and fast, good got left out. pretty appropriate for the results being demonstrated in the comments. i'd be embarrassed if I made such a thing, and there's no way i'd show it off to someone else. this feels like someone took a "learn how to use AI in 10 days" and released the first project they worked on. i read "teach yourself PHP in 10 days" in 1999 over a weekend, and was banging out a website with a database in no time. i'd never ever ever show the code written then to anyone, but at least it did what was advertised on the box.
  - jacobyoder 3y ago
    Look past the embarrassment - if this poster gets just a handful of people to register for "shipfast" service, it's well worth the time it took to build and promote this. Those people will likely buy other stuff from the OP as well. Loads of people on HN could likely build something 'better' by some metric, but of those, how many would still have the nerve to post it in public? I'm not sure I would. Although I've got something I'm planning to post to show HN sometime soon, my default mode is telling me not to post - someone might post something negative, and I'll be embarrassed! FWIW, the OP isn't sharing the code, and you wouldn't have needed to show your original 1999 PHP code; just share the built service with folks. That's all most folks care about - the utility/value. That said, there's nothing (yet?) compelling about this service that I've not seen done before. But it might be new/novel to some.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      > FWIW, the OP isn't sharing the code, and you wouldn't have needed to show your original 1999 PHP code; just share the built service with folks. That's all most folks care about - the utility/value. right, but that's why i followed up with "at least it did what was advertised on the box". this product is so bad at making "logos" that it teeters on the verge of not doing what's advertised on the box
      - jacobyoder 3y ago
nkrisc 3y ago
Not the sort of thing I expected to work so well on mobile. Well done.
- marclou 3y ago
  [dead]
DonHopkins 3y ago
Do you do Chrome? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIOfEiy4lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIOfEiy4lc Flying Logos First shown at the 1989 Siggraph Electronic Theater to a rave response, this 3 minute humourous film went on to win several top computer graphic awards that same year including Niccograph of Japan. With a voiceover soundtrack written by Peter Conn and animations assembled from various productions done during the previous year, the film unfolds as a client calls into Flying Logos, Inc. to have his logo visualized. In the course of the conversation, we see and hear the juxtaposition of the technical versus the anticipated, the imagination versus the possibility. But more important than amusing audiences and winning awards, this landmark film marked the debut of the PC as a fully capable production system to do broadcast quality work, which up to then was only done by large companies with very expensive graphic workstations. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689488
marclou 3y ago
Hey HN, I'm Marc and I ship like a madman. 17 products in the last 2 years. So I made LogoFast: A simple & free logo maker, with a touch of AI. 1. Pick an icon 2. Add a background color 3. Adjust padding, shadow, roundness. 4. Export, and voila! If you need inspiration, the AI helps you pick the right icon & colors. I share all my work on : https://twitter.com/marc_louvion https://twitter.com/marc_louvion I also built ShipFast: The NextJS boilerplate to ship startups in days, not weeks: https://ShipFa.st https://ShipFa.st
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  This app just crashed when I tried to change the Icon after some tapping around ... ... which does not give me huge confidence in anything shipped with the "ship as much in as little time as possible" mindset.
  - Kharacternyk 3y ago
    There must be a memory leak in the icon picker. It eats more than 1.5 GB.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
trizoza 3y ago
Super neat!
Etheryte 3y ago
Looks solid, super easy to ideate and generate variations. The only small gotcha is you need to include the copyright notice for the icons [0] if you want to actually use the logo anywhere. [0] https://lucide.dev/license https://lucide.dev/license
- marclou 3y ago
  I added a link to Lucide at the bottom right of the editor, did I miss something?
  - jdiff 3y ago
    The end user also needs to be informed of their obligations, as they are also using the icons.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    All users of the generated "logos" also need to provide the Lucide copyright notice and license.
23B1 3y ago
A cool experiment. If you're a startup, do not use logo-generation services. You all look the same to me. Find a strong brand/graphic (not UX/UI) designer to partner with over the long term as your brand develops and invest in your brand equity. It will pay dividends.
- omneity 3y ago
  Can you recommend how to meet them? Ideally with a certain level of skill, and who doesn’t try to fleece you.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    I've been exploring that and found https://dribbble.com/ https://dribbble.com/ No experience using them, but it's a starting point. Curious if there are alternatives out there and if people here recommend it or not
    - 23B1 3y ago
      See my other post, but yeah Dribbble definitely has some good ones. Check https://dribbble.com/shots/popular/branding https://dribbble.com/shots/popular/branding
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - 23B1 3y ago
    https://www.commarts.com/magazines https://www.commarts.com/magazines < their annuals list only the best design https://www.printmag.com/ https://www.printmag.com/ is a blog with good regular posts by top identity designers https://medium.com/theymakedesign/branding-agency-new-york-30fc47e21195 https://medium.com/theymakedesign/branding-agency-new-york-3... < recent list I don't know how up-to-date they are but GRAPHIS has always been a good resource: https://www.graphis.com/archives/books/logo-design/ https://www.graphis.com/archives/books/logo-design/
Perz1val 3y ago
Tada icon (party popper) does not fill right, you might want to give that algorithm a look
- marclou 3y ago
  [dead]
sunshine_reggae 3y ago
The downloaded files on FF don't have any icon in them (tried both .png and .svg). Have you tested it on FF?
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  Hey at least it was shipped fast though, right? Who cares about quality these days?
- marclou 3y ago
  Yep I did and it worked well.. Which icon did you try? Might trying another one?
  - sunshine_reggae 3y ago
    It doesn't seem to depend on the logo (i.e. the apple). But maybe it's some kind of strict security/privacy setting that I use in my browser.
andiareso 3y ago
Why is this on here? There isn't anything novel about putting a background behind icons. Icons are not logos. If you're using Lucide which it seems like you are, users need to include Lucide's license in their product which doesn't make for a good logo. [EDIT]: typo
- selfselfgo 3y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tantalor 3y ago
make the logo bigger
- marclou 3y ago
  [dead]
4ggr0 3y ago
EDIT: Referring to OP/Shipfast, not this submission directly. I get some sort of weird feeling looking at the "17 products built in the last 2 years". Lots of SaaS which help other people build SaaS, coupled with an "everyone can be a coder/entrepreneur"-mantra. Looked at the startups which were built with shipfast, and most of them felt like a case of "looks really nice, but doesn't actually do much/anything". Gamifiers, aggregators, list builders (just use $FAVORITE_NOTE_APP), social media account growers. I don't know... The constant mention of how much money OP makes coupled with products which helps others make products gives me some ponzi-scheme vibes (just the principle of constantly bragging to give people FOMO). No offense, I've got a slight hangover and the weather is sh*t, I'm probably a bit too cynical today.
- morkalork 3y ago
  That twitter feed is too much. It's so extra. It encapsulates everything I hate about LinkedIn. Which is why I'm here, not there. If I wanted influencer cringe, I know where to go.
  - 4ggr0 3y ago
    > It encapsulates everything I hate about LinkedIn That's the exact feeling I couldn't quite put into words! Very influenc-y, humblebraggy, like almost every post I see on LinkedIn (just have it as a digital, public, online CV and to connect with past co-workers, please don't roast me for having a profile there).
- doix 3y ago
  The most impressive part to me is the submissions reaching the HN frontpage multiple times. I remember the user which is pretty rare for me on HN. While the tech side isn't super interesting to me, I can definitely appreciate the marketing. He's "hacked" HN as far as I can tell. Edit: huh, I was wrong. Reached the front page twice, once with shipfast and once now.
  - 4ggr0 3y ago
    Someone should build a SaaS-Startup which ensures that 'Show HN' posts about your new SaaS-Startup reach the front page, guaranteed! (Sometimes. Maybe. But at least the website will look nice).
pknerd 3y ago
I am a fan of Marc and an admirer but I could not grasp how this works. All I see an Apple Icon..I did not know what to do
- 4ggr0 3y ago
  Very random and unrelated - the certificate for projects.adnansiddiqi.me expired on the 4th of December, maybe you weren't aware of it yet :)
  - pknerd 3y ago
    Yes, thanks. I do know about it and I am moving that part as a subfolder soon
Ensorceled 3y ago
The most common "simple" icon is a word mark and background. Would be nice if you could set a word and font (say, for instance, the letter X) in addition to the icon selection.
Stokley 3y ago
this is awesome!!
avereveard 3y ago
Guess "I made a way to get a backgound color under a font I didn't make" didn't sound as well for a title but still. How is this here? Is there a botting issue on hn?
replwoacause 3y ago
Aren’t you the guy that did the Joe Rogan commercial for yourself, splicing video of you into an interview you never had with him, that people responded really poorly to?
healsdata 3y ago
Your pig icon has an odd fill artifact near it's tail.
- jdiff 3y ago
  Very many of them do. They weren't meant to be filled, lots of them are open paths that will just look awful filled.
blinding-streak 3y ago
Was excited to try the AI icon generator, but it's flat out broken. Prompts for "golf ball" and "museum" and other things result in random unrelated icons.

74 points by marclou 3y ago

Looks great. I was an early entrant into the "logo maker" space, which was very hot a few years ago when someone realized that it was a great way to get leads for small businesses who were just in the first days of their journey as a company. Unfortunately since then, the market has become saturated with competitors and other business-services providers that have free logo makers, so it's hard to rank or really get much traction with a new logo maker. Abuse is another problem - people on Fiverr sell "professional logo design" and then just use your tool to make a logo (if you could consider that to be abuse). If this is a nice little bonus feature for your existing users, however, it is very slick. Good work!

marclou 3y ago
[dead]

finger 3y ago

The AI feature seems to just generate random icons unrelating to the input.

marclou 3y ago
What was your input? will check
- RankingMember 3y ago
  not parent, but I entered "police station" as a test and got a bunch of unrelated icons
  - mtillman 3y ago
    Don’t do his qa for him: https://x.com/marc_louvion/status/1720059433580130372?s=20 https://x.com/marc_louvion/status/1720059433580130372?s=20
    - chewmieser 3y ago
      - I don't test my code - I don't use git branches - I don't change my tech stack Weird brags...
      - morkalork 3y ago
        Lmao
    - Etheryte 3y ago
      > I built 17 startups in 2 years. That's phrased like a brag, but I'm not sure what's so cool about making 17 failed businesses in 2 years. Working through failure can lead to success, yes, but simply failing many times over does not mean you'll automatically succeed at one point.
      - jacobyoder 3y ago
        And yet... not trying (and often failing) will pretty much guarantee no success at all. It's a tough nut to crack.
- system16 3y ago
  Not OP but I entered “real estate” and got an ear with hearing aid, a terminal, a bug with a play button, and a bowl of soup with steam.
- felixarba 3y ago
  I entered "bakery" and got dice, a bug, and something I can't recognize
- themanmaran 3y ago
  Same. Entered "database transforms" and got calendar icons.
- CivBase 3y ago
  I tried "Dark logo for a dice game" and I got H4, clouds, and the icon for looping the same song over and over.
- stockholm 3y ago
  I entered “cursor” and it gave me a clipboard
- Double_a_92 3y ago
  Literally the placeholder text (the ice-cream shop) doesn't produce any sensible results. Shipped too fast I guess ._.
- tecleandor 3y ago
  I did a quick test for a logo and the answer seemed more random than related: https://imgur.com/a/a93s0t5 https://imgur.com/a/a93s0t5
izzydata 3y ago
Same. I tried a ton of things such as "Robot", "Banana", "Cheese", "Flower", etc.. and got things that were completely random.
dylan604 3y ago
with a domain like shipfa.st, makes me think of the old saying "good, cheap, fast" pick two. since the thing is free and fast, good got left out. pretty appropriate for the results being demonstrated in the comments. i'd be embarrassed if I made such a thing, and there's no way i'd show it off to someone else. this feels like someone took a "learn how to use AI in 10 days" and released the first project they worked on. i read "teach yourself PHP in 10 days" in 1999 over a weekend, and was banging out a website with a database in no time. i'd never ever ever show the code written then to anyone, but at least it did what was advertised on the box.
- jacobyoder 3y ago
  Look past the embarrassment - if this poster gets just a handful of people to register for "shipfast" service, it's well worth the time it took to build and promote this. Those people will likely buy other stuff from the OP as well. Loads of people on HN could likely build something 'better' by some metric, but of those, how many would still have the nerve to post it in public? I'm not sure I would. Although I've got something I'm planning to post to show HN sometime soon, my default mode is telling me not to post - someone might post something negative, and I'll be embarrassed! FWIW, the OP isn't sharing the code, and you wouldn't have needed to show your original 1999 PHP code; just share the built service with folks. That's all most folks care about - the utility/value. That said, there's nothing (yet?) compelling about this service that I've not seen done before. But it might be new/novel to some.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    > FWIW, the OP isn't sharing the code, and you wouldn't have needed to show your original 1999 PHP code; just share the built service with folks. That's all most folks care about - the utility/value. right, but that's why i followed up with "at least it did what was advertised on the box". this product is so bad at making "logos" that it teeters on the verge of not doing what's advertised on the box
    - jacobyoder 3y ago

nkrisc 3y ago

Not the sort of thing I expected to work so well on mobile. Well done.

marclou 3y ago
[dead]

DonHopkins 3y ago

Do you do Chrome? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIOfEiy4lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIOfEiy4lc Flying Logos First shown at the 1989 Siggraph Electronic Theater to a rave response, this 3 minute humourous film went on to win several top computer graphic awards that same year including Niccograph of Japan. With a voiceover soundtrack written by Peter Conn and animations assembled from various productions done during the previous year, the film unfolds as a client calls into Flying Logos, Inc. to have his logo visualized. In the course of the conversation, we see and hear the juxtaposition of the technical versus the anticipated, the imagination versus the possibility. But more important than amusing audiences and winning awards, this landmark film marked the debut of the PC as a fully capable production system to do broadcast quality work, which up to then was only done by large companies with very expensive graphic workstations. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689488

marclou 3y ago

Hey HN, I'm Marc and I ship like a madman. 17 products in the last 2 years. So I made LogoFast: A simple & free logo maker, with a touch of AI. 1. Pick an icon 2. Add a background color 3. Adjust padding, shadow, roundness. 4. Export, and voila! If you need inspiration, the AI helps you pick the right icon & colors. I share all my work on : https://twitter.com/marc_louvion https://twitter.com/marc_louvion I also built ShipFast: The NextJS boilerplate to ship startups in days, not weeks: https://ShipFa.st https://ShipFa.st

jdthedisciple 3y ago
This app just crashed when I tried to change the Icon after some tapping around ... ... which does not give me huge confidence in anything shipped with the "ship as much in as little time as possible" mindset.
- Kharacternyk 3y ago
  There must be a memory leak in the icon picker. It eats more than 1.5 GB.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

trizoza 3y ago

Super neat!

Etheryte 3y ago

Looks solid, super easy to ideate and generate variations. The only small gotcha is you need to include the copyright notice for the icons [0] if you want to actually use the logo anywhere. [0] https://lucide.dev/license https://lucide.dev/license

marclou 3y ago
I added a link to Lucide at the bottom right of the editor, did I miss something?
- jdiff 3y ago
  The end user also needs to be informed of their obligations, as they are also using the icons.
- matsemann 3y ago
  All users of the generated "logos" also need to provide the Lucide copyright notice and license.

23B1 3y ago

A cool experiment. If you're a startup, do not use logo-generation services. You all look the same to me. Find a strong brand/graphic (not UX/UI) designer to partner with over the long term as your brand develops and invest in your brand equity. It will pay dividends.

omneity 3y ago
Can you recommend how to meet them? Ideally with a certain level of skill, and who doesn’t try to fleece you.
- airstrike 3y ago
  I've been exploring that and found https://dribbble.com/ https://dribbble.com/ No experience using them, but it's a starting point. Curious if there are alternatives out there and if people here recommend it or not
  - 23B1 3y ago
    See my other post, but yeah Dribbble definitely has some good ones. Check https://dribbble.com/shots/popular/branding https://dribbble.com/shots/popular/branding
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 23B1 3y ago
  https://www.commarts.com/magazines https://www.commarts.com/magazines < their annuals list only the best design https://www.printmag.com/ https://www.printmag.com/ is a blog with good regular posts by top identity designers https://medium.com/theymakedesign/branding-agency-new-york-30fc47e21195 https://medium.com/theymakedesign/branding-agency-new-york-3... < recent list I don't know how up-to-date they are but GRAPHIS has always been a good resource: https://www.graphis.com/archives/books/logo-design/ https://www.graphis.com/archives/books/logo-design/

Perz1val 3y ago

Tada icon (party popper) does not fill right, you might want to give that algorithm a look

marclou 3y ago
[dead]

sunshine_reggae 3y ago

The downloaded files on FF don't have any icon in them (tried both .png and .svg). Have you tested it on FF?

jdthedisciple 3y ago
Hey at least it was shipped fast though, right? Who cares about quality these days?
marclou 3y ago
Yep I did and it worked well.. Which icon did you try? Might trying another one?
- sunshine_reggae 3y ago
  It doesn't seem to depend on the logo (i.e. the apple). But maybe it's some kind of strict security/privacy setting that I use in my browser.

andiareso 3y ago

Why is this on here? There isn't anything novel about putting a background behind icons. Icons are not logos. If you're using Lucide which it seems like you are, users need to include Lucide's license in their product which doesn't make for a good logo. [EDIT]: typo

selfselfgo 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

tantalor 3y ago

make the logo bigger

marclou 3y ago
[dead]

4ggr0 3y ago

EDIT: Referring to OP/Shipfast, not this submission directly. I get some sort of weird feeling looking at the "17 products built in the last 2 years". Lots of SaaS which help other people build SaaS, coupled with an "everyone can be a coder/entrepreneur"-mantra. Looked at the startups which were built with shipfast, and most of them felt like a case of "looks really nice, but doesn't actually do much/anything". Gamifiers, aggregators, list builders (just use $FAVORITE_NOTE_APP), social media account growers. I don't know... The constant mention of how much money OP makes coupled with products which helps others make products gives me some ponzi-scheme vibes (just the principle of constantly bragging to give people FOMO). No offense, I've got a slight hangover and the weather is sh*t, I'm probably a bit too cynical today.

morkalork 3y ago
That twitter feed is too much. It's so extra. It encapsulates everything I hate about LinkedIn. Which is why I'm here, not there. If I wanted influencer cringe, I know where to go.
- 4ggr0 3y ago
  > It encapsulates everything I hate about LinkedIn That's the exact feeling I couldn't quite put into words! Very influenc-y, humblebraggy, like almost every post I see on LinkedIn (just have it as a digital, public, online CV and to connect with past co-workers, please don't roast me for having a profile there).
doix 3y ago
The most impressive part to me is the submissions reaching the HN frontpage multiple times. I remember the user which is pretty rare for me on HN. While the tech side isn't super interesting to me, I can definitely appreciate the marketing. He's "hacked" HN as far as I can tell. Edit: huh, I was wrong. Reached the front page twice, once with shipfast and once now.
- 4ggr0 3y ago
  Someone should build a SaaS-Startup which ensures that 'Show HN' posts about your new SaaS-Startup reach the front page, guaranteed! (Sometimes. Maybe. But at least the website will look nice).

pknerd 3y ago

I am a fan of Marc and an admirer but I could not grasp how this works. All I see an Apple Icon..I did not know what to do

4ggr0 3y ago
Very random and unrelated - the certificate for projects.adnansiddiqi.me expired on the 4th of December, maybe you weren't aware of it yet :)
- pknerd 3y ago
  Yes, thanks. I do know about it and I am moving that part as a subfolder soon

Ensorceled 3y ago

The most common "simple" icon is a word mark and background. Would be nice if you could set a word and font (say, for instance, the letter X) in addition to the icon selection.

Stokley 3y ago

this is awesome!!

avereveard 3y ago

Guess "I made a way to get a backgound color under a font I didn't make" didn't sound as well for a title but still. How is this here? Is there a botting issue on hn?

replwoacause 3y ago

Aren’t you the guy that did the Joe Rogan commercial for yourself, splicing video of you into an interview you never had with him, that people responded really poorly to?

healsdata 3y ago

Your pig icon has an odd fill artifact near it's tail.

jdiff 3y ago
Very many of them do. They weren't meant to be filled, lots of them are open paths that will just look awful filled.

blinding-streak 3y ago

Was excited to try the AI icon generator, but it's flat out broken. Prompts for "golf ball" and "museum" and other things result in random unrelated icons.