PartydoosMedia, a Dutch digital creative agency, has conducted research on how artificial intelligence will affect the way brand identities are produced in the long and near term. This article will summarise our findings. This article was originally written in English; translated versions are provided for reference purposes only.

A logo is an integral component of every company’s global marketing effort. Historically, most firms depended on graphic design organisations to build a brand identity, and these graphic design agencies relied on their (team of) graphic designers. A graphic designer would create multiple sketches and early designs before being pleased with their own product.

This was an important aspect of the procedure. However, it was inefficient and would result in a reduced maximum number of logos developed by the agency each week or month. It costs the agency money and time. With the current expansion of artificial intelligence bots engaged in the creation of art, PartydoosMedia’s R&D Team has conducted thorough testing on how artificial intelligence such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL·E 2 may come into play by assisting with the sketching aspect of logos.

PartydoosMedia has generated a tremendous quantity of logos with the assistance of artificial intelligence over the last several months and after testing elected to continue with the testing of DALL·E 2 and Stable Diffusion throughout our study period. We utilised AI to develop drawings for logos for both our clients and our study, and it produced unexpected outcomes. DALL·E 2 developed four logo versions depending on prompts, and most of the time at least one of those variations was of high quality. DALL·E 2 still had alignment difficulties and lacked the ability to export the logo as a vector file. PartydoosMedia still had to re-create the logos in a tool like Illustrator or Affinity Designer, but by leveraging DALL·E 2’s designs, we were able to save design time by about 40% each design.

Logo modifications

Initially, PartydoosMedia focused on logo changes. That is, we employed artificial intelligence to develop something based on an existing logo. One of the largest online gaming communties, “TruckersMP,” asked CEO Justin Sijbolts to modify their logo to reflect the summer of 2022. The prompt used by Justin Sijbolts was “A cartoon style summer picture with a sunset. Silhouette grass in the foreground and a sun in the background.” to make the initial designs for the logo’s background

Following the AI inventions, CEO Justin Sijbolts continued innovation by reproducing and integrating sections of the AI output into a vector-based visual design application, after which they placed the TruckersMP logo in the centre and sent it out to TruckersMP for the first preliminary reviews.

TruckersMP and its community notified us that the logo met their high quality requirements and that they were very pleased with the results. We did not inform the gaming community beforehand that the logo we would produce would be created in part by artificial intelligence. Showing them the logo did not lead them to believe it was created by AI, demonstrating that they have successfully liked a logo created in part by artificial intelligence.

Logo modifications: The results

It can be seen that logo changes in the form of background changes are easily accomplished with AI. However, it does still take a lot of imagination and labour from the Designer’s side (as with most sketches). Though there’s a large decrease of Design Time it required to produce stated image, it cannot be done by most people as it still takes full recomposing in another (Vector based) design programme.

Logos by AI: Skyflow

Following that, we worked on leveraging artificial intelligence to create logos rather than logo alterations. Skyflow wanted us to create a brand identity that included an aeroplane and the colour blue. The AI produced several dubious solutions when given the query “Blue airplane logo for airline Skyflow, modern” However, the one on the lower right piqued our interest. This symbol depicts the rear of an aeroplane, with the lines below presumably referring to the engines.

However, it is clear that the AI did not consider the emotions underlying the design in this case – the logo used appears “angry” to users. However, with a few modest changes, we could simply eliminate this sensation and the logo we’ve exported is now getting used by Skyflow.

Logos by AI: Banana Biome

The Banana Biome Logo is the last AI-created logo we’d want to display as part of our study. We attempted to come up with a “weird” challenge, such as “minimalistic logo design, banana triangle, mascot.” The AI really generated some logos that made perfect sense. They all represented a banana triangle, however the AI clearly struggled with the “mascot” component of the prompt, which is understandable. However, we can see that the AI begins to comprehend forms and alignment better, with all four logos having strong alignment and a solid comprehension of shapes.

We utilised the third logo to create a “usable” vector version that businesses could use. PartydoosMedia thinks that the typical person, or even graphic designers, would be unable to recognise that this logo was created in part by artificial intelligence.

Stable Diffusion

After Dall-E 2, our team considered other solutions, such as DreamStudio’s new Stable Diffusion AI. PartydoosMedia rapidly discovered that while Stable Diffusion was excellent at creating mascots and animal logos, it was terrible at recognising fundamental forms, object merging, and any type of letter mark. Initially, we had challenges with the logo’s orientation; the AI would place the logo on a 3D object, which made it difficult to convert it to a vector graphic using Adobe Illustrator’s Image Tracing. However, we could change the prompt such that this is no longer displayed.

We attempted many different logos, and the four best ones are shown above. We attempted to train the AI to develop a logo for the fictitious company “PetSquare” with the first logo. We were thrilled with the outcomes, which blended the Pet and Square parts. The prompt also requested a cat, which was flawlessly executed. We requested a Parrot mascot for the second logo, which worked out perfectly. The third one is a lion, as is the fourth. We did observe, however, that the fourth logo (and the second lion) has parallels with a lion, but it also has the face of a cow, even though we did not request it to. This shows the AI’s incapabilities of differentiating different animals from one another.

The lion design was our favourite; we wanted the AI to build a mascot logo with an angry, roaring lion, and this is what it came up with. This is the end result of some small changes to the logo (on the right). This was the best logo we could come up with from hundreds of prompts for the Stable Diffusion AI.

What does this mean for logo design in the near and far future?

We think that in the near future, artificial intelligence will assist to empower creativity for graphic design businesses and offer graphic design to the public. However, there is still a long way to go before AI can completely replace graphic designers in areas such as alignment, word interpretation, and more complicated prompts. We believe AI will assist humans rather than replace them. At the very least, in the near future. Who knows what the future holds for us.

PartydoosMedia will continue to research into innovations and push the frontiers of technology while expanding its portfolio and reach on a day-to-day basis. As a healthy company, a company which has witnessed continuous growth for the past 2 years, we have a foundation of customer-oriented business where human-centric thinking is key.

Wat is PartydoosMedia?

PartydoosMedia is a digital creative agency based in Groningen, the Netherlands visualising your imaginations. We strive to provide the best service for you and your business by creating the perfect branding for your business. We create extraordinary graphics, photos, videos and animations by doing extensive market research.

PartydoosMedia has worked with over 200 companies and is always pushing the frontiers of graphic design for both businesses and individuals.