Why copying heraldic symbols fails to generate real coats of arms
What Heraldry and Mon Can Teach Us About Building Visual-Identity Generators
Ben Overmyer, creator of the Iron Arachne generator, argues that heraldry is not a symbol catalog but a rule system. Western blazon works like a constrained language: generate a structured description, then render it. Japanese mon are compositional, built by rotating and repeating graphical motifs. Randomly combining charges or flowers ignores the rules and exceptions—like the Kingdom of Jerusalem's gold-on-silver—that make designs authentic.
A randomly selected flower pasted three times onto a circle is no more convincingly a mon than a randomly selected lion pasted onto a shield is convincingly a coat of arms.
- Terr_
> Visual-Identity Generators
This makes me think of user-avatar scenarios, like systems that automatically make an abstract design linked to an anonymous user's IP.
If the possibility space is big enough, old heraldry rules could be applied the same way—though old families might not appreciate seeing "their" design randomly appropriated.
- NickNaraghi
There was a really cool project a few years ago from Area Tech that explored this - generative shields (with heraldry on them). https://shields.build/
- alexpotato
I love this for several reasons:
1. LLMs building tools that can be run by either LLMs or humans are a great idea
2. Generative art sometimes feels like "art by machine" but humans create art and logos in very similar ways e.g. start with "the rules" and then use that to create the art
Also, someone generally pops up in these discussions about "how this is not being creative" etc. To that I point people to the Everything Is A Remix series:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc (2016)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA (updated for 2023)