this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Fuck AI
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I work in an industry that deals with customer logos almost exclusively. I now get at least one person a week bringing in garbage-tier art they made in Canva or whatever that isn’t made to any standard at all, so they have tons of thin lines, gradients, blurring, etc. Shocker, AI only thinks about making it visually appealing when it won’t translate to a one-color, doesn’t have PMS tones to base it on, no simplified version, etc.
People think making a logo is just that. Just the image itself. They don’t think past what’s in front of them.
In my experience, most people have simply never thought about it before. If someone decides they want to open a bakery and they have never had a business before, they haven't thought about everywhere their new logo will be used unless they get that expertise from someone. I've gotten pretty good at explaining these concepts to people and they typically respect my expertise and take my advice, but not everyone 😆
And that’s just it. In the past, you would have contacted a branding firm and paid someone with expertise to do all that for you. Now people think, “Why pay a branding firm when AI can do it in 5 minutes?”
I would think AI art would be perfect for the use case of “here is the general gist of what I want, now turn it into something usable”. I can also imagine basically nobody actually using it that way correctly though lol.
That being said, there are also thousands of logos that go through proper design companjes and they pay a lot of money out and get literally just the name in a standard sans serif font or abstracted until it is unrecognizable as a name like KIA or TVA.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62657cd22274f23af33a4b49/1651109120857-S6HF3QB80PZN8CSL96YF/image-asset.jpeg
https://digitalsynopsis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/logo-redesigns-rebrands-worst-jaguar.jpeg
https://nataleerushurst.blogspot.com/2022/08/alphabet-company-history.html?m=1
https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/AirAsia-Logo-history.jpg
https://storage.googleapis.com/ftidag_prod/activities/stad-gent-2/logoGent_c100.png
And the list goes on, Verizon, gap, tropicana, jcpenny, etc...
I mean, AI is trash, but it can also be extremely difficult to know if you will get a decent logo after paying thousands or tens/hundreds of euros spent (looking at you Belgium cities using millions of taxpayer euros for bad rebrands).
See I was all against the new Kia logo until I saw their new cars they started releasing about a year later. It really matches their new design language. I think they should have rolled out the new logo on cars only after their refresh so you don't have older style vehicles with the new style logos
I'm pretty sure you just summarized the human paradigm.
Devil's advocate: Another way to think of it is that as AI tools mature, we will see more tools make an impact the way template-based web builders transitioned us away from, at best, charmingly kitchy html business websites of '95-'05 that are horribly optimized and broken half the time towards standardized options that cover the basics with curated choices for clients to express themselves without hanging themselves. Yes, the template builders did homogenize business websites, but for all the businesses that weren't going to/couldn't pay for a serious web developer/designer anyway I'd rather go to their website and experience a bland predictable layout than experience my browser melting even though there may be a glimmer of creativity from the enthusiastic teenager they hired to build it from scratch (I was that teenager).
We're all fixated on how AI could not do the work for the top 25% of clients who require high quality professional work. We forget that 75% of clients cheap out for DIY/scam/hack options when it comes to design, resulting in lots of crap in the ether. AI tools have huge potential for smoothing out the low-hanging fruit of basic pain points.
We're actually already seeing this happen in some cases. There's a company that I believe Procreate has partnered with that is commissioning designers to create website elements for them to train their AI with for their website template creator.
Personal taste is totally fine, but what you're describing isn't a logo, it's an illustration. A good logo specifically must be simple so that it can be applied across a bunch of different contexts — print, digital, large, small. What if you wanted your logomark as a favicon? Depth and lighting would make it look like a smudge at that size. What about stitching your logo onto a hat?
This is the main issue. Logos are part of a brand system, and generating a logo with AI circumvents all that thought. You get something that might look good, but your whole system becomes super fragile.
Again, there's no disagreeing with personal taste, it's just a matter of thoughtful use of the system and medium.
I totally agree that more diversity in art makes things more interesting, and I'm a big fan of bucking trends to make things unique. Art should be able to exist on its own merit, as the artist intended, divorced from what would make a better t-shirt. Even stepping out of art and into design, it makes me sad how many cars are grey, black, or white. Let's get some variation!
But... This is a logo. It's not a poster. It's not a t-shirt or a building or a painting. It's a logo. As such, there are some specific criteria that will make it better at being a logo. It needs to be instantly recognizable. It needs to be legible across a wide variety of contexts, sizes, mediums, and color applications. As a result, logos tend to be better if they're simpler.
The AI output is an illustration because it uses things like shading, complex shapes, and shadows, etc... Can you use an illustration for a logo? By all means. In some situations, it'll probably look nice. But at a certain size, it just won't be recognizable, and then it won't be doing the main job you want a logo to do — be instantly recognizable across as wide a set of scenarios as possible.
Also, to be clear, I'm not a fan of the logo on the left either. It's not particularly imaginative, the highly variable line weight makes it feel in cohesive, and the details mean it probably wouldn't work well at small sizes either.
Try embroidering your "logo with lots of colors and gradients, depth, lighting" on a polo shit and see how little of it actually translates. Or even a one color print job on a mailing. It will look like an unrecognizable hot garbage smudge.
Not only will it look terrible it'll be significantly more expensive, each color and complication is going to add to the price. A simple logo with a clean silhouette is going to look nice and save money.
If you hire a human designer there's a much higher likelihood of it looking good.