With AI image generators evolving at such a rapid pace, people have put them through all sorts of fascinating tests. Someone used a new feature in one of the most popular text-to-image tools to see if it could be used to redesign logos – and people even think some of the results are better than the originals. .
Midjourney has opened up more possibilities in its platform by integrating another technology that is evolving alongside image generation: image description. One user tried using it to describe iconic logos and then using the descriptions as prompts for new designs (see our article on how to use DALL-E 2 for the basics of AI text-to-image generation).
I asked Midjourney v5 to “/describe” some logos, see how it would create prompts for them, and see what it would create in response. Starbucks pic.twitter.com/EiKujhTl1wApril 4, 2023
In addition to using ‘/imagine’ prompts to generate images based on a text description, Midjourney users can now do things the other way around and reverse engineer images. By uploading an image and using the ‘/describe’ prompt, they can ask Midjourney to create a text description. This can then be modified and used to, in theory, generate similar images with any modifications desired.
Since AI image generators do not produce the same image twice from the same prompt, even using the exact description obtained via ‘/describe’ will generate variations of the original image. A user, who is called fofrAI on Twitter (opens in a new tab)tried it on logo designs, from Apple to Starbucks, Twitter and Pepsi (or should it be Pespi?), to see if he could “redesign” their logos for them.
Many people seem to think the Starbucks logo redesign is better than the original, although it is more complicated and lacks balance and symmetry. Some of the other models are just plain weird. Since AI image generators can’t handle text, Pepsi even changed its name.
But I have my doubts about the use case. The fact that some of the logos produced are so similar to the actual designs seems to be a result of their inclusion in Midjourney’s training data rather than just description. Type “Starbucks logo” as a prompt in an AI image generator, and you’ll likely find that it knows what it is, although the result might look awful.
And while AI image generators can be great tools for brainstorming, here all successful redesign ideas emerge by accident. Even adding specific descriptions to try and modify the design based on ideas you might already have in mind will still be pretty hit or miss for now, but we may soon get to a point where you can describe an existing logo and modify the description to make it simpler or flatter (like we’ve seen so many car logo brand change) or to tweak the colors and other details.
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