ShapeFactory: Design Tools for Logos, Colors, and Gradients

As a graphic and web designer, we're faced with plenty of tasks and challenges every day. This includes the design of logos, as well as a harmonious combination of colors and gradients. Whether these tasks should be handed over to an online tool is subject to discussion. With ShapeFactory, you at least have the option to do so - and it's quite fun. The ShapeFactory offers four different design tools that make it easy for you to build logos, as well create color compositions and gradients. ShapeFactory itself is designed in a very appealing way, and an interesting tool, especially as a source of inspiration for your own designs, or to simply pass some time.

Create Logos With the Logo Tool

The logo tool lets you create a logo in one minute, by entering the wordmark, and choosing a font. There are tons of different fonts available to choose from. This includes simple sans-serif and serif fonts, but also fancy and modern fonts, which are very striking, making them a great choice for logos. [caption id="attachment_104364" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Logo Tool[/caption] Subsequently, add a logo by choosing one of the different categories, which include "optical illusion", or "cloud". There are 13 categories in total. Each one contains several shapes for you to choose from. In no time, the tool builds a logo by combining text and image in different ways. This results in a preview of multiple suggestions, some of which have the label and the logo next to each other, while others put them below each other. Additionally, you get to pick a color combination and download your logo for 40 USD. 10 additional USD get you a logo animation on top of that. If you want to spend that much on an automatically created logo is up to you. However, it can be very interesting to let it pump out some logo variants in order to prepare for a new project.

Combine Colors With the Pigment Tool

The harmonious combination of colors can be just as challenging as the design of logos. Because of that, the ShapeFactory also provides a tool for this job. [caption id="attachment_104365" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Pigment Tool[/caption] The pigment tool helps you create appealing color combinations. To do so, choose the intensity and brightness via sliders, and you'll get plenty of suggestions for new coloring. Aside from two prime colors that are geared to each other, different shades of the colors are suggested as well. This way, you'll get a palette full of colors for your next project in the blink of an eye. Afterward, the colors are available as a palette for Sketch or Adobe. You can also download them as an SVG file. The colors are displayed as hexadecimal and RGB values. A Pantone color for print usage is included too. The SVG file displays each color as a card with the different color values.

Gradients Made Easy With the Gradient Tool

The gradient tool works in a very similar way, using the same method to generate color gradients that you can download as an SVG file, or copy into your clipboard as a CSS snippet. [caption id="attachment_104363" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Gradient Tool[/caption] Here, two colors are combined to a linear gradient. A slider allows you to define the angle of the gradients. Just like the pigment tool, this tool lets you limit your selection to a specific color.

Color Images With the Duotone Tool

Apart from black and white photos, duotone photos are some of the most charismatic images. Here's where the final tool of the ShapeFactory comes into play. [caption id="attachment_104362" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Duotone Tool[/caption] The duotone tool is an easy way to color images. Simply choose two specific colors, or have the tool create a color combination based on one color. Images from the photo site Unsplash are used as examples. The live preview shows you what the images look like with the selected colors applied. However, you also have the option to search the Unsplash catalog for specific images. Alternatively, just upload and color your own image file. When done with that, the colored file is available for download.

Conclusion

Professional graphics and web designers probably won't get much use out of the ShapeFacory. After all, Illustrator and Photoshop provide way more options. The design of logos and finding colors, gradients, and the proper image aesthetic are part of a creative worker's craft. However, ShapeFactory has a very appealing and sophisticated design, and playing around with the individual tools is fun. ShapeFactory's advantage is that the results are shown on the fly, with multiple versions on the screen at once. It's definitely worth checking out, even if you may never use the tools in practice. It might still be a source of inspiration here and there.