In an effort to figure out how to use AI to help with my design work, I want to see if I can utilize a Chat GPT logo prompt to tell me what a skincare logo for a fake company called ‘Gloss’ should look like, so I can design it.

In most cases, any AI logo suggestions would just be used as a starting point, or an idea to make a logo sketch, but for today, I’m going to actually create what Chat GPT 3.5 gives me. It might be utter garbage, but let’s see what we get.

Let me preface this by saying it doesn’t really matter what AI gives you, as long as you use your own experience and skill in design to create something that actually works. Think of AI as a tool, not a replacement for your own expertise. This applies whether or not AI gives you a text description of a logo (which is what we’re doing here), or an image of the finished logo. It’s still up to you to judge the logo on its merits as it applies to the original purpose of making the logo in the first place.

As you’ll discover here, a Chat GPT logo prompt won’t really give you anything revolutionary, or even uniquely brilliant, but it will give you a starting point for your logo ideas.

Now let’s move on to our Chat GPT logo creation prompt to see the logo creation process.

The Chat GPT Logo Conversation

Me:

Make a logo for my business that sells high end skincare called “Gloss”

Chat GPT:

“Certainly! Here’s a description of a logo design for your high-end skincare business called “Gloss”:

The logo features a sleek and elegant design, capturing the essence of luxury and sophistication associated with high-end skincare products. The word “Gloss” is written in a stylish and refined font, exuding confidence and class.

The letter “G” is emphasized, using a slightly bolder font or with a subtle embellishment to make it stand out, symbolizing the brand’s identity and making it memorable.

Behind the word “Gloss,” there is a minimalist yet captivating icon representing skincare. It could be an abstract depiction of a droplet, suggesting hydration and nourishment, or perhaps a graceful curve resembling a beauty tool or a leaf, signifying natural ingredients. The icon is designed in a subtle metallic shade or a soft pastel color palette, reflecting the premium quality of the products.

Overall, the logo radiates sophistication, luxury, and effectiveness, conveying to customers that your brand offers top-tier skincare solutions that deliver exceptional results.”

Chat GPT Logo – Breaking It Down

So Chat GPT is suggesting I make a sleek, luxurious logo where ‘Gloss’ is written in something stylish and refined. Okay, so let’s start with something sans serif.

Next, I’m asked to put emphasis on the letter G by putting it in a heavier font weight or using an embellishment. Is there a reason for this Chat GPT? It’s fine, because somehow, the AI says this will make the logo memorable. That’s not really how logos work, but we’ll have to see how it goes when I put emphasis on the G… and make the rest of the word ‘loss’ look different. I’m starting to see problems already.

Then I’m asked to include a minimalist icon that represents skincare; something like a water droplet, beauty tool, or leaf. Pretty generic suggestions, though I’m not sure what type of beauty tool would even work here… an eyelash curler? An LED face mask? The icon itself is meant to be a metallic shade or soft pastel colour. Since it’s going to be behind the actual logo text, pastel would work best, as long as it’s very pale.

So that’s pretty much all we’re given. The logo sounds very generic, and like it might lack legibility, but that’s up to me, the designer, to solve.

Lastly, I asked Chat GPT which program I should use to make the logo, and it came back with five suggestions: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Canva, Inkscape, and Affinity Designer. I’ve never used Inkscape before, but I do know that I won’t be making a logo in Photoshop or Canva… so let’s go with Affinity Designer because it’s pretty great.

Making The Chat GPT Logo

To start, I’ll type the word ‘GLOSS’ in all caps. I’m choosing the typeface Bebas Neue to start, since it has that ‘high-end’ look we’re going for. Might change it later though.

Next, I’m going to attempt to make the G bolder, however, this font is already quite bold. If I want to make the G a thicker font weight than the rest of the text, I need a typeface that comes with a wide range of font weights. Unfortunately, my version of Bebas Neue doesn’t have that, so I’m stuck with artificially bolding the G… which looks terrible.

Let’s try a few different typefaces that have more weight options. Century Gothic, Roc Grotesque Compressed, Gill Sans MT, and Montserrat.

In general, when using two different font weights, you want to skip over a font weight since you don’t want those weights to be next to each other. Even better, skip two.

For example, with a regular weight font, pair it with a bold or extra bold, rather than a medium (Depends on the typeface though). This just provides a bit more contrast between the font weights.

Back to our logo now. While I actually quite like the Century Gothic ‘G’ in the image, everything else looks awful. There’s something to be said for context. We don’t really want the logo reading G + LOSS

(Although, maybe if it’s the loss of your wrinkles it wouldn’t be so bad?)

So I don’t think the bolder G is going to work here, so let’s try Chat GPT’s other suggestion of simply embellishing the G, but having all letters the same font weight. I’ll go with Century Gothic (in bold) for now, since that G is really nice.

So I think this works for the time being. However, I now need to add the ‘minimalist yet captivating icon’ behind the text, which will inevitably compete for attention with the embellished G. But here goes anyway.

So I just reused the same embellishment from the ‘G’, and gave it a thicker stroke in a pale purple colour that goes well with the darker purple colour I put the main text in. I also added the word ‘skincare’ since I forgot it in the original Chat GPT logo prompt.

Having the icon behind the logo isn’t something that’s really going to reproduce properly, and will be difficult to use on darker backgrounds; so for a real logo, I wouldn’t include it. But I’m doing it here because that’s what Chat GPT told me to do!

I also asked Chat GPT for some tagline suggestions and, honestly, they’re not bad. It’s possible all of them are already being used by real brands, but I’m not going to research all that right now, since this isn’t actually a project for a client.

So here’s the final Chat GPT logo for Gloss Skincare, warts and all.

I definitely think it could use more polishing. It works, but it doesn’t really have that ultra high-end look that I wanted.

So let’s remove the embellishment on the G, remove the background icon, open up the kerning a bit, and create an icon using a circle and a script font G (Edwardian Script ITC). I’ll have the G masked inside the circle so we end up with a fancy looking icon. Here’s what we’ve got now:

This certainly feels more high-end and luxurious. It’s still a bit generic, as you’ll see many, many skincare logos that look similar to this online. However, it works for the purposes of this experiment, and would absolutely work as a real-world logo. Although, for a real client project I would probably make a custom G for the icon, not just a G using a common script typeface.

Additionally, I would also likely spend extra money on finding just the right typeface for the main logo text and getting something great that really works for the brand.

Making a Chat GPT Logo – In Summary

Overall, using Chat GPT for logo design was surprisingly fun, but really just gave generic, overused ideas. Although, that does make sense, since AI is trained on what’s already out there.

I think the real benefit of using Chat GPT for logo design is that it gives you someplace to start. Many times I have been completely stuck on where to start on a branding project, and in desperate need of ideas. This would help out with that, a lot.

So What’s Next?

So where do we go from here? Well, AI is getting better all the time, and designers need to figure out how to use it as a tool rather than a competitor.

Obviously, Chat GPT is just one medium of AI, and it’s a text-based one. The other image based mediums of AI offer a lot more options in terms of visuals; which is what designers mainly focus on anyway. However, that will have to be covered in another post, because there’s a lot to go into.

But can AI create a full logo? How about an effective logo? How about an effective, appropriate, and unique logo that will work for a client for decades to come? Time will tell, but designers need to be ready and familiar with the tools that can help to turn a concept into a successful logo design.

How have you used Chat GPT in your design career? Have you used it to generate ideas for designs or to create text based content for a brand? Have you created a Chat GPT logo like I did? Let me know in the comments below.