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Brand / logo help recommendations?

I'm hesitant to go straight to AI with this, so reaching out to my network...

I'd like to make some brand (including logo) updates to #railsmarket  and I could use some recommendations on how you'd proceed with this. Going to end up doing a site redesign after this, but want to start with branding and logo updates first.

What are your go-to processes for branding and logo design?

If there's someone you've worked with in the past, I'd love any recommendations.


I'm a brand strategist, so I'd be happy to help :)

Definitely appreciate this, Cat! Would love to chat and get more info about your services. I think I need to do a bit more initial work first (hoping to do that this week) just to be able to come to any chats with some direction and not waste everyone's time.

Sure! Here's my calendar link for whenever you're ready: calendly.com/scalewithwords/c…

I have way more availability than that, but I'm protective with my time publicly. If none of those work for you, let me know and I bet we can figure out something else. I work around the clock anyway 🤣

If you need someone to make sense of and organize your thoughts and make a plan forward to get the foundations created, the offer is there to take.

For strategy, I've worked with people who only had an idea and nothing else. Those tend to be really intensive, long-term projects since we're doing market research + validating, brand strategy (brand core, messaging, positioning, voice, etc), GTM (go-to-market) strategy, and ongoing marketing strategy -- plus the execution and iterations of everything.

Typically if people come with solid research, a validated idea, or even a first iteration (however shitty it performed), we can build a lot quicker on that since we're mostly refining.

I've been a freelance writer since 2008 and fCMO since 2017, so clients also usually have me write their copy and set up their systems, but I'm guessing you're pretty well-versed with those being a fCTO :)

(The only thing I don't do is visual branding because, trust me, you don't want me to do that. I partner with a lot of agencies and have a pretty decent referral list, so I'd be happy to share my people with you. Brand design is the last stage in brand strategy, though, so there's time.)

I'm just curious, what are the downsides of using AI for logo design, apart from the fact that it can be quite time-consuming for a good logo?

I find that it still feels rather disjointed and "off". Not opposed to it, and actually will probably end up going that route as I'm not sure I have the budget just yet to have someone help, but largely just curious as to how others do it.

Your logo/branding isn't going to make or break your startup. I'd just pick something simple and move on.

For handle.horse I just use the 🐴 emoji. For WIP, I used 🚧 for a long time. In your case you could do something like this: 🚂🛍️

If you prefer not to use an emoji, you can just use a nice typeface with maybe a basic shape and color. That's what I did for Room AI: roomai.com

If you really want a logo, I'd just find a suitable icon on one of the many free icons site and add your name next to it. For example this one: thenounproject.com/icon/rails…

Make sure to check the license before using such an icon.

Yeah, definitely logos won't make or break anything (at this point, anyway).

I interpreted as understanding the core audience, positioning, and messaging, which absolutely would make or break a startup.

I've seen a LOT of people use emojis as logos lately, mostly in the indie hacker community. I love to see it!

Yeah, this is what I did initially with the current version. Definitely not a must have, so maybe this is more just procrastination? Probably better to just focus on monetization and other improvements first. The design overall was bugging me (just felt so cheap/clunky) and if I was going to redo the overall site design anyways, figured I'd start with doing proper branding.

For my latest project I was also wondering about this at the beginning, but I ended up using and emoji and moved on to build. :)
I would look into doing something like that to start.

Yeah, this is what I general do too, and what I currently have. Exploring next step options to clean it up a bit more.