TutorLatin logo design
TutorLatin is a website that offers free access to a large catalogue of exercises and tools to learn the Latin language.
The rich history and culture surrounding the Latin language is brought to life through history exercises, audio examples and an A.I. Latin spell checker
The task for Aryonix Arts was to design a simple logo that embodied the ideals of TutorLatin, Latin taught like a modern and spoken language with cutting edge tools, while preserving the values that we usually associate with the ancient language, wisdom, culture, knowledge and universalism.
AI as an inspiration tool
Midjourney's AI was initially used to gather inspiration for the logo. You feed a text input to the AI and get some images. One can then seek variations. The tool gave out some very interesting images showcased below.
However, the issue with AI methods is that they will tend to output images that represent the input text with the highest probability. In other words, what visual features best represent a given text.
The problem is that one does not wish to create a logo that looks like a logo that everyone else uses. An AI will look at the dataset and see that the specific input words more often correlate with specific visual features, which will favor correlations that occur the most.
We loose any uniqueness because the AI outputs a (maybe local) optimum image for a given text. While we are aiming for something new that nobody else has done, which occurs rarely, or never, in the training dataset of the AI. We can compensate for this effect by tweaking the text input to bring back some uniqueness, but the AI tends to resist and ignore the extra information.
In this specific case, using the input "Tutor latin on clouds, wisdom" showcased an image with an open book on top of clouds. While the combination is interesting and visually pleasing, the open book look is heavily used in logos concerning tutoring. A simple Google search with terms "Tutor logo" will output many variations of logos with open books.
In conclusion, AI can help experiment with ideas when you provide the inspiration through your words, but it will have the tendency to favor the most common/generic visual features for the words that you give.
Pen and paper
As usual, a few ideas were drawn on paper to create a general theme for the logo.
The goal at this step is to try to bring out visually what TutorLatin intuitively evokes.
The final sketches settled on representing a spearhead, which communicates well the cutting edge approach of TutorLatin and at the same time how it relates to ancient times. Additionally, we find the 'T' of TutorLatin in the spearhead shape.
All propositions
Expanding from the ideas expressed above, 13 designs were submitted for review to TutorLatin.
The chosen one
The favorite logo was the spearhead 'T' logo. It worked when viewed small, looked modern and minimalist. The logo could probably use some further tuning so that proportions work better, and is something that will be investigated in the next iteration.
This logo design is now being used on the TutorLatin website.