Toronto-based Logojoy has raised a $6 million Series A as the company ramps up development of its AI-assisted logo development platform.
The round was led by Real Ventures with participation from Boston-based Flybridge Capital. Logojoy’s platform allows users to have logos designed by an AI; logos can be designed an unlimited number of times, with users only paying for the ones they use.
“It was clear to us early on that Logojoy is a platform that businesses of today need. We were extremely impressed with their roadmap and the capabilities of their AI—far beyond what anyone else in the space has accomplished,” said Sam Haffar, partner at Real Ventures. “With the acquisition of some key personnel, we feel they’ll be uniquely positioned to become the go-to graphic design service that helps entrepreneurs get all the branding assets that they need to succeed on day one.”
Since launching in 2016, Logojoy has been used by 3.3 million entrepreneurs. It’s sold over 100,000 logos to customers in 188 countries through its platform.
The company plans to use the funding to expand its design and machine learning capabilities, which include investing in its AI that can create custom symbols, fonts, and graphics. That requires graphic designers working closely with data scientists. “There’s no silver bullet,” said CEO Dawson Whitfield, a designer by trade. “You need to break down the individual things that go into an automated design platform, and those things might be combining colours really well. So for that, you need a designer working closely with a data scientist to help train that AI to combine colours.”
Logojoy also wants to become an “all-purpose” design platform ranging from flyers to restaurant menus to billboards. Rather than trying to build an online photoshop, the important part of the platform will be having the machine make designs for users.
“We’re creating that drag-and-drop interface, but we’re taking some flexibility out of it. In return, the user gets the feeling of sitting next to a designer,” Whitfield said about how the platform would work. “Whereas most platforms you have full flexibility, but with that flexibility, you can shoot yourself in the foot because with that flexibility comes a lot of responsibility. We’re saying that we’re going to take that flexibility away, but we’re also going to take that responsibility away.”
The company wants to roll out the platform mid-next year.
Logojoy raised its seed round in June 2017. At the time, Whitfield spoke to the concern that an AI-powered logo design platform would put other designers out of work. Speaking this time around, he said that the work of designers would only continue to evolve.
“VR might need a whole new set of designers or AR or animations, there are a lot of different ways and paths that design is going, and design is constantly evolving, so designers will evolve along with that,” Whitfield said.
The company is expanding its team from 29 to 50 employees by the end of 2019.