What Heraldry and Mon Can Teach Us About Building Visual-Identity Generators

> 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.

Tangent, but I deeply appreciate the treatment of footnotes on this article, just floating alongside the text in the right gutter instead of at the bottom of the article. It seems so obvious (at least on desktop) but I haven't seen it before. It's so nice to be able to see whether it's something I want to read, or just a citation, without clicking and losing my place (yes, I know there's usually a link back to the article flow, but especially in the "sticky header" era we've been in for decades, that rarely works well).

Quick visual on some mon:

https://mon.xavid.us/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon_(emblem)

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/

Can we all agree to system prompt Claude and open models to stop using the same exact Fraunces font everywhere (The Capital J looks like someone folded it backwards). I said open models because qwen and Glm and Claude produce the same design and font for the same “design a gorgeous website” prompt.