Why Farmers Should Avoid AI Logos
In this week's episode, James and Alyssa discuss the rise in Farmers using AI logos for their business, and the potential negative impact it can have on their brand. Hear how designers build out unique logos to help Independent Farmers stand out.
For more Farm resources, visit: barn2door.com/resources
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Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
James Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm James, the Chief Operating Officer of Barn2Door and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, Barn2Door offers an all in one business solution for independent farmers who are cutting out the middleman and selling direct under their brand to serve their customers who can purchase from them both online [00:01:00] and in person.
In today's conversation, we're gonna be going into detail about artificial intelligence and the impacts it's having on farmers when thinking about creating a logo for their farm business. I'm happy to welcome back Alyssa from our design team at Barn2Door. Alyssa has worked for us for more than five years, and her team has helped to create thousands of beautiful websites, logos, and farm brands for producers across all 50 states.
Alyssa is the de facto expert in the United States when it comes to creating an attractive farm brand. Today I'm excited to talk with Alyssa about AI generated logos, why they're problematic, and the importance of working with a professional design team that actually understands farm brands and what they need.
Welcome back, Alyssa. I have to tell you, it's hard for me to believe it's been more than five years since you joined Barn2Door. It's been fantastic to see your career evolve here. So I'm so thankful you've grown your career with Barn2Door. But more importantly, I'd love to talk a little bit more about your role here, given you started here [00:02:00] as a young designer many years ago, and now you run the entire team.
Tell folks who are new to Barn2Door's podcast, who have never met you, a little bit about your role and about the design team.
Alyssa Pascual: Yes. As a design lead on the team, I'm really proud to be able to be on a team that's happy to help our farmers and to offer a variety of different services to our farms.
We build out websites, we also do farm logos and we also do design edits so we don't leave people high and dry after their website goes live and we don't nickel and dime them. If they need some help, we're here to help, and we're also happy to provide for our scale farms some email assets and banners.
James Maiocco: Alyssa, with all this experience you've had, I'd love to dig specifically into today's topic and talk, about logos, right? Because your team has done, hundreds of logos for farmers. And I know all of us really appreciate a good logo, but many of the farmers who are listening to us probably don't understand all the work that goes into it. Can you give us a little bit of an overview, like how do you guys [00:03:00] undertake designing a farm logo today?
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah. It's actually a four step process that we go through.
We do a logo intake form, we do a logo review call, we do edits and then we provide the full package at the end.
James Maiocco: Okay. Well tell me a little bit about the intake. What's that look like? What type of information are you asking the farmer to help you guys start to generate initial ideas for the farmer for a logo?
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah, so on the intake form we want to understand more about their business and the type of logo that they're looking for. It's really important that when they're filling out this form, all the decision makers are involved in the process. They'll be able to go through and decide what type of logo they're looking for, if it's an emblem circle, emblem signage, an icon, or a letter mark.
This also helps our farms to communicate to us just what style we should be aiming to create for them. And also we'll be able to decide if it's gonna look more modern or rustic, more luxurious or more playful. And then we also want them to choose a main focus for the [00:04:00] logo, whether that be their animals, products, farm scenery, anything like that. Some farms, they have specific landmarks or trees or farm structures they want to include. Farms also have very specific breeds that they have for their animals, and we need to know that type of information because we're not just pulling these icons from anywhere we are creating these icons from scratch, and we wanna make sure that we are telling their farm story and we're making sure that we're including information that is unique to their business.
James Maiocco: I think that it's one of the most, exciting parts about what your team does is just the level of attention and care that you pay to what matters to the farmer and what makes their business iconic.
Like you said, one breed of cattle versus another, it looks vastly different in terms of stature and how they look, right. When I've seen the logos you guys have created, I've seen massive variation based on, for instance, just a breed of a cattle or a pig or a chicken, whatever it may be, right?
In fact, I can't remember the name of that funny chicken that has a little [00:05:00] really fuzzy head, great example, right? I mean, there's just, there's so many different varieties, and then you also mentioned other icons that might be important to a farmer that you see on their farm, like a tree or a barn?
What are some examples of some things that you've seen there? I'd be just kinda curious what comes top of mind.
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah, so there's a lot of different types of barns out there. Of course, if you imagine it from kids stories, you might see a specific type of barn in your mind, and that's probably more what AI logos would be pulling in.
But there are some really unique barn structures out there and historical barn structures out there that we actually take a photo and we draw that from scratch and put it into their logo.
James Maiocco: That is so cool. That is awesome. So you guys are really tailoring this based on what's specific to their farm. Walk me through the next step so after you capture all this information, got some photos, got some feedback from the farmers. What's important to them, the styles they like. What's next? What do you do in terms of marinating or creating the first set of ideas for the farmer?
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah, so [00:06:00] we really take all the information they give to us.
We spend some time thinking about it. We do ask for a two week lead up to a logo review call so that the designer has time to actually create these designs and show something that's worth showing on that call. So for the next step, that logo review call is the presentation of the three versions that designers come up with.
This is the opportunity for the farms to ask questions to the designers and the designers to get more clarity on the designs that, maybe they wanna know are you wanting to lean more toward your premium products or are you wanting to lean more toward your sustainability side of the business? It could be important for both of those things, but the logo needs to get tailored down a little bit.
James Maiocco: Got it. And I know internally we have a messaging tool called Slack, where I know your team often posts like, Hey, here are three variations. We do these votes. And I, see the, battles that go on internally inside the company and people voting on what logo they like better.
What do you see among the farmers? 'cause I know many times I, imagine [00:07:00] farmers must feel torn about which direction they wanna go. 'cause it's such a personal. decision, right, for them.
Alyssa Pascual: Definitely. You get lots of different variety of people. You know, some that are like, I want that one. It's the perfect option for me.
And then you have others who like all three, and you have to really dig deep and ask specific questions and help them decide which one are they leaning toward more? Or you get people who are between two and then they're like, okay, I need to show this to some people. We need to have a vote ourselves and see what we wanna go with.
James Maiocco: That's awesome. What a great problem to create, right? Something that's iconic, but something that's gonna last gonna be a real symbol for them. It's gonna have it all their merchandise, their hats, and , packaging, all that good stuff. So, what's next? Once you've presented three different logos what comes back to you next? You mentioned something about getting feedback before you go to a final version.
Alyssa Pascual: Yes. So we have our farmers fill out a feedback form for the logo where they'll tell us which version they've decided on, and if there's additional edits that they [00:08:00] wanna see made to that logo.
We don't expect everyone to just choose one right away. We usually are expecting at least some edits to come through. So once we get that feedback form back to us, we'll make the changes and then we're not just gonna straight up package the logo and send it to them right then and there. We do email them the updated version and we just double check for final approval. And once that's approved, that's when we'll actually move to the final stage of packaging the logo.
James Maiocco: Got it. So before you go and present the final version of the logo, tell me a little bit about the emotional experience of the farmers. They get excited about seeing the final product and what does the final reveal look like? What's that experience been for you, Alyssa?
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah. A lot of times when we send over the final packaging, we get emails back of our farmers just being so excited and wanting to go share it out on social media.
They're wanting to immediately go get it printed on their packaging, get some signs created and also as a design team, we are very happy when people send us those [00:09:00] pictures of the final versions out in the wild.. You know, definitely send us those pictures if you have them. But it's just a big thing seeing it come from an idea to reality and now it's gonna be part of their brand and their identity and what people know them for.
James Maiocco: That's well said. And it's great to see it. And I know you've shared some of these pictures too, where you see 'em on their trucks, you see 'em on their banners, you see 'em on their hats. It's very cool. Really well done. So, with this, again, personalized approach that you guys have taken, Alyssa, I mean it's not free, right? There's a cost to doing this, and we're not the cheapest solution out there by any means. But you get what you pay for and you guys provide an incredibly well tiered farm branding experience for farmers.
Now some farmers we've talked to are trying to generate logos themselves with AI, and I think we've seen some real challenging or some funny, you know, outputs might look kitschy or what have you, those type of things. Talk with me a little bit about what does that AI logo making process look like today?
If I was a farmer and I wanted to go out and create a logo with an AI tool today, what's [00:10:00] involved, and what are usually the outputs?
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah, so AI logo makers are pretty straightforward. You type in your brand name and the industry, you pick a few style preferences, and then the system will actually pull from a library of existing icons and fonts and it'll mash something together.
So what you get is a set of variations on a theme, but it's not true creativity. It's really just pattern matching and remixing what's already out there and not crafting something original for your brand.
James Maiocco: Got it. Are they completely free or is there some cost to some of these AI generated logos as well?
Alyssa Pascual: A lot of AI logo generators advertise themselves as free, but technically you can play around with them at no cost and you can type in your brand name and pick a few styles. Preview different logo options, but the logos you see on the screen aren't the files you actually use for your business. If you want the professional files, the high resolution versions, the vector files for printing, the formats you need for packaging, signage, or even just a website, that's where you're gonna hit a paywall.
So while [00:11:00] the process feels free at first, if you want something you can really use to represent your business, you're going to have to pay for it no matter what.
James Maiocco: Got it. Yeah. There is no free, so like you said, it's gives you the illusion of being able to do some of these things, but if you want something workable, you're gonna have to pay for it. Do they allow edits with these AI logo generators? What if somebody gets the wrong breed of my cattle, right? Or the, color isn't quite what I was thinking of. Right? Do they allow you to do edits on those AI logos?
Alyssa Pascual: Most AI logo tools do let you make some edits, but they're usually pretty limited.
You're not gonna be getting your specific animal breed in there. You can change the color, swap out fonts, or move an icon around things like that. But you're really working within a template and you don't get the kind of flexibility you'd have with a designer, where you can dig deeper into the symbolism or completely rethink the concept. With AI, you're more or less just tweaking what it gives you and not collaborating to create something unique.
James Maiocco: Got it. So, like what would be one of the biggest issues? Because I can imagine, like you [00:12:00] said, you often ask for pictures from farmers of iconic barns or trees or products or animals on their property. Can you do that with the AI as well? Will they allow you to create something you know, that's truly unique and iconic to your farm, or is that just, well wishes?
Alyssa Pascual: To a certain degree, but you really don't have flexibility with it. You can probably put in an image of your barn and it will sort of give you something that looks like your barn, but it's not going to be a hand drawn sketch or icon of your barn where it's clean, you can make the tweaks that you need to, you know, you'd have to be going with something that's close, but not really exactly correct, especially with the breed of animals. It doesn't typically know what those look like.
James Maiocco: Alyssa, you've worked with many farms and generating some beautiful logos. What are some of the struggles you've seen with farmers who've tried to generate their own AI logos, and have you had to fix some of the things that you've seen come [00:13:00] across your plate?
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah, so I've noticed some common issues with AI logos for farms. One of the biggest problems is that there's often just too much going on. So the AI logos tend to try and include everything at once. Animals, barns, plants, and it ends up feeling cluttered rather than simple and memorable. , The animals themselves are another issue.
The breeds are usually wrong. Their sizes can be off, and there's sometimes been even deformities that we've seen, like a pig that didn't have a proper face. , and then barns, like we talked about earlier, will rarely be able to see the farms, actual buildings. It makes the logo look a little bit more generic and not personal. And then in terms of like practical design limitations, many AI logos come in full color and not always, able to be turned into a solid color version. So you might not be able to use that for signage, packaging, marketing materials. They might not be in the resolution that you need or the right formats, so they just don't look as professional as they could be.[00:14:00]
James Maiocco: Yeah, I know many times you like to have just a plain black version, a plain white version, so you can put it on a, shirt or a mug or a hat. I know we've done the same thing with our logo here at Barn2Door, even though it's a two color logo. The reality is we have black and white versions as well 'cause they look very clean and crisp on a hat or on a piece of merchandise. so with AI generated Legos, even if you do a paid version, do they not give you multiple formats generally?
Alyssa Pascual: You have to really know what to ask for if you're looking for something like that. And you have to be very particular with your prompt, which at that point you almost need a designer to even create the AI logo for you as well because it's not going to do just information that is straight up one color. When you put in the information you're looking for, it's going to give you a full color version and not likely to give you the solid color versions, and it's just going to give you one version. It's not going to create a special color palette for you like a designer would where they're considering your [00:15:00] full brand colors and how that's gonna look on a website and on your marketing materials. It's gonna give you something that's more generic on there.
James Maiocco: Got it. So what would you say to a farmer who's considering an AI generated logo for the business and how would you contrast with our design process today?
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah, if a farmer's thinking about using an AI generated logo, I'd say it can seem like an easy shortcut. It is fast, it's cheap, and you get something that looks okay right away. But AI logos do often miss the mark. They can give you a barn and a few animals, but they usually don't capture your farm's story, values, or what makes your farm truly unique. Plus you can only make limited edits and bigger changes are difficult or even impossible to make.
Our design process is different because we work exclusively with farmers. That means we understand the industry and what matters to both the farmers and their customers. We know what makes farms unique, so we ask the right questions to create the logo that's personal and distinctive. And we design custom icons from scratch that reflect the farm itself, whether it's [00:16:00] the specific barn or tractor or maybe even a historical fence. And because we are professional designers, we do follow best practices for logos. We make sure that design isn't too busy, it's versatile, and that the files will work wherever they need them, for the packaging, for the signage, for their social media. The end result is a logo that not only looks great, but truly tells the story of the farm, and that's something just AI generator can't do.
James Maiocco: Yes. And it's just clean and beautiful. You guys do such a great job, and I know there's so many examples of logos you've done of all kinds of stylistic preferences, right? That the farmer, may have. And so it's just great to see the diversity that you guys have built over the past several years. But like you said, the experience of building a logo is truly unique and truly created for that given farmer is very special, right? You wanna spend the money, you get what you pay for.
Well, Alyssa, I really appreciate your time because I know you're busy. I know your team is managing, again, hundreds of farm brand packages as we speak, that we're rolling out this month.
Is there [00:17:00] any last bits of advice or words of wisdom you'd share with farmers who are thinking about the importance of building their farm brand and making it something that's attractive, for their buyers.
Alyssa Pascual: Yeah. I would say for your logo, when you're creating this, you really gotta think of the importance of it and where it's going to be and how long you're going to be using it.
Because when you're creating something with an AI generated logo, it might be okay as an initial placeholder at the beginning. But if you're going to be having this brand on all of your packaging, on all of your shirts and mugs and hats and signs on your farm, then you want to have it represent you and you want it to represent your story.
So take the time, do a little bit of research, and then consider the best option for you, whether that be something that is quick and easy, or if it's something that truly identifies with you guys.
James Maiocco: Yeah, one thing I absolutely love about what you guys do, Alyssa, is the fact that you guys create emotional [00:18:00] appeal.
With the, quality of the logos you designed truly bespoke to each farm and attractive to their buyers, right? That is just truly unique in a truly creative process, in this world of AI I know there's many good uses for AI, but I will tell you the creativity you guys bring to the table, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Thank you for all your hard work, Alyssa, that you and your design team do. I wanna extend my thanks to Alyssa for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more of Barn2Door on our Instagram @Barn2Door. Here at Barn2Door, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country, and delighted to offer services and design services too to help farmers access more customers, increase sales and save time for their businesses.
If you're an independent farmer who's looking to get started or transitioning to selling to direct, or you just simply want to simplify your business management, please visit Barn2Door.com/learnmore. Thank you for tuning in today, and we look forward to joining you next time on the Independent [00:19:00] Farmer Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door.com/resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.