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Open-Sourced Logos

logodust.com

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Re: Open-Sourced Logos

#61

Post by its2complicated »

overcast wrote: post #16
its2complicated wrote: post #12

They're all just geometric shapes that anyone could throw together. Really, you're pretty damn lazy or uninspired if you can't put together a stop sign outline with 2 circles on either side of it!

Do you realize how many company logos are just the Helvetica font? You can't get any more basic than that. When you're just getting started, especially a one man operation, anything to get your product up and running quicker is a good thing. Here's a few "no name" companies. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/40-excellent-logos-c...

Yes, but thought, money, and man hours went into them. They didn't just grab rejected logos from the "commodity" bin, which is what we have here. Seriously, if you can't put some design effort into your logo then something's wrong.

Re: Open-Sourced Logos

#63

Post by weinzierl »

propter_hoc wrote: post #59
weinzierl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real risk in a situation like this is not really that you get a C&D from using it on your startup's landing page. Doesn't a trademark have to be defended if you won't face the risk to lose it? Is the C&D really so unlikely?

IP law firms use automated software to scrape the trademark registration filings at the USPTO and other national trademark offices (ex. [1]). These software services automatically assess filings for possible infrigement. This is the most likely way for a bigco's lawyers to find out about your logo or company name - far more likely than them finding out about your startup from techcrunch or some other source. Unfortun…

Thanks for sharing your experience. The second link was really interesting to read and the Apple/Google offline foreign filing trick was new to me.

I still don't understand how it solves the problem. After six months you will have to file at the USPTO and then the scrapers could find you anyway.

Re: Open-Sourced Logos

#64

Post by weinzierl »

leni536 wrote: post #56
itslennysfault wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creative Commons (it's at the bottom of the page). Specifically: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

>No additional restrictions Does it mean that one can't trademark a logo from this site?

Copyright and trademark are independent, you could have one without the other.

Re: Open-Sourced Logos

#65

Post by [deleted] »

paulpauper wrote: post #24

These logos aren't good. A logo should have some degree of symmetry, simple enough to draw, original, and not readily resembling something in real life or a prior logo. this is an umbrella plus tear drop: http://www.logodust.com/img/logo18.png paperclip http://www.logodust.com/img/logo20.png too complicated to be effective: http://www.logodust.com/img/logo9.png ripoff of star trek and anarchy circle http://www.logodu…

[deleted]

Re: Open-Sourced Logos

#66

Post by vacri »

mratzloff wrote: post #5

You, too, can have a generic logo that doesn't actually reflect your individual company, message, or values! Simply pair it with a font of your choosing (font and logo need not match), and you have yourself a brand. These kinds of things devalue the actual work that goes into real branding, like crowdsourcing your logo or Marissa Mayer popping out something that she thinks "looks nice" over a weekend. It also has the…

Because every side project should spend thousands of dollars getting a "proper logo from a proper designer"? There are people on HN who have talked about their side projects existing on $10 Digital Ocean droplets, should they be dropping $500 for a properly-branded logo from a low-end designer?

Re: Open-Sourced Logos

#67

Post by vacri »

its2complicated wrote: post #12

They're all just geometric shapes that anyone could throw together. Really, you're pretty damn lazy or uninspired if you can't put together a stop sign outline with 2 circles on either side of it!

With a service like this, you can peruse a catalogue and find one that jumps out at you. Half the battle in a logo is finding something that you like.

Re: Open-Sourced Logos

#69

Post by Lerc »

userbinator wrote: post #26

I wonder how easy it would be to generate more logos like these, via neural network or other means.

Neural networks might be tricky. Logos tend to be precise, neural networks work better when the result is fuzzier.

On the other hand, identifying a good logo is the sort of fuzzy problem that you might be able to train a network for. Use it as a fitness function over some other algorithm.

You could have a generator that combined a variety of operations into a 'logo expression' that generates an image.

Have values and operations in the expression to represent:

  a variety of geometric shapes.

  composite operations (union, intersection, subtraction etc.)

  symmetry operations (reflective, rotational)

  Glyph images (possibly with some sort of semantic metadata to enable relationships between multiple glyphs)

  Transformations (translatiosn, rotations etc.  Possibly just a matrix)

  Filters (smooth corners,  grow shape,  generate outline)
So you get something like

square(1.5).rotate(45).smooth(30).outline(3).translate(-0.5,0.0).rotationalSymmetry(5).subtract( circle(0.25).translate(0.5,0.5) )

Which if I got it right should be a set of 5 squares with rounded corners and a line thickness of 3 arranges in a circle and a small circle cut out of the bottom right corner of the squares.

Re: Open-Sourced Logos

#70

Post by Lerc »

Lerc wrote: post #69
userbinator wrote: post #26

I wonder how easy it would be to generate more logos like these, via neural network or other means.

Neural networks might be tricky. Logos tend to be precise, neural networks work better when the result is fuzzier. On the other hand, identifying a good logo is the sort of fuzzy problem that you might be able to train a network for. Use it as a fitness function over some other algorithm. You could have a generator that combined a variety of operations into a 'logo expression' that generates an image. Have values and…

I'll add to that the possibility of adding a layer similar to http://www.contextfreeart.org/

It occupies a somewhat similar space, (I believe it does not provide composition operations). Having the ability to define shapes as a probabilistic combination of other shapes gives you a massive variety of possibilities.

something like this would allow for a good variety of base imagery which could then have the layer I posted in the previous comment come after.

Check out the context free art gallery for some amazing (not very logo like) images

http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/

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