AI logos

This is a delightful article. There's the main lede - the hilarious comparison of current AI product logos to Vonnegut's illustration. There's also the hypothesis that that AI companies are products are choosing to mimic each other from a fear of standing out. The result is a miasma of butthole looking logos in the AI product world.

All of the hypothesized reasons for why the world ended up here resonates, with the design by committee resonating the most:

Another factor is how these logos are created. Important corporate decisions involve many stakeholders. The result is often the safest, most inoffensive option, the average of everyone's opinions. In design meetings at AI companies, conversations probably sound like:

No single person suggests making a logo that resembles an anus, but when everyone's feedback gets incorporated, that's what often emerges. Risk aversion in corporate environments naturally pushes designs toward familiar, "safe" territory, which apparently means anatomical openings.

Is there an opportunity in standing out with hard angles? What do hard angles represent? This video suggests that hard angles highlight man made and futuristic.

At a very simplistic level, the takeaway is this:

• curves = natural
• hard angles = man made

The best comparison for this was the porsche 911 (or most porsche cars) versus lamborghini designs. The porsche's design is more akin to a pebble with sweeping curves versus the hard angles of say a Lamborghini Gallardo.

To me the current crop of AI products are clearly trying to be natural. They want to buy permission to make mistakes given that is still a probable outcome in some of these systems.

At the same time, there's something to be said about the opportunity to stand out as an AI tool that accepts its futuristic state and the design supports it. So, it got me thinking about a highly angular HAL.

Here are some AI generated images for me trying to land on a decent looking angular AI - app icon. A selection of the interesting images are included below:

Somehow it was Community that predicted this world