She Designed Meta’s New AI Logo. Then Came the Hate

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Bay Area lettering artist Jesscia Hische knew that when she took a freelance gig to design the M logo for Meta’s new AI assistant Muse, it was bound to make some people angry. “AI is such a third rail, and Meta is such a third rail,” she tells me.

湾区字体艺术家杰西卡·希舍（Jesscia Hische）在接下为 Meta 新的人工智能助手 Muse 设计 M 标志的自由职业工作时，就知道这注定会引起一些人的不满。她告诉我：“人工智能是一个极其敏感的话题，Meta 也是如此。”

Still, as a small business owner who relies on client work to keep her two brick-and-mortar art and stationary shops in Oakland afloat, she says she needed the money. “New Work! (Don’t be mad at me),” Hische wrote in her newsletter last month. “I worked with Meta on an icon and logotype for their latest release: Muse, which just launched! It’s Meta’s foray into the AI agent / personal assistant world. I know folks have big feelings about both AI and Meta, but this has been a really fun project for so many reasons.”

尽管如此，作为一名依靠客户工作来维持她在奥克兰两家实体艺术和文具店经营的小企业主，她说她需要这笔钱。希舍在上个月的通讯中写道：“新作品！（别生我的气），我与 Meta 合作完成了他们最新发布的产品 Muse 的图标和标识设计，该产品刚刚上线！这是 Meta 进军人工智能代理/个人助理领域的尝试。我知道大家对人工智能和 Meta 都有强烈的看法，但出于许多原因，这确实是一个非常有趣的项目。”

The news quickly went viral on Threads, where dozens of fellow designers criticized Hische for selling out. She responded to the haters by trying to explain the decision:“For the past year, I pretty much have 2-4 payrolls in my account at any given time, which if you own a small business, you know is pretty precarious,” she wrote. She added that she had also invested $100,000 in Studioworks, an admin platform she runs for creatives, and $30,000 in Drawling, her art shop for kids in Oakland, where she hosts classes and workshops. “I have 4 people on payroll including myself, my mom, and two shop employees,” she added. Nothing she said seemed to help.

这条消息很快在 Threads 上疯传，数十位同行设计师批评希舍“出卖灵魂”。她试图通过解释自己的决定来回应这些批评者：“过去一年里，我的账户里基本上只有 2 到 4 次工资发放的余额，如果你经营过小企业，就会知道这有多么不稳定，”她写道。她补充说，她还向自己为创意人士运营的管理平台 Studioworks 投资了 10 万美元，并向她在奥克兰为孩子们开设的艺术商店 Drawling 投资了 3 万美元，她在那里举办课程和研讨会。“我需要支付包括我自己、我母亲和两名店员在内共 4 个人的工资，”她补充道。但她所说的一切似乎都无济于事。

“Disgusted,” wrote one user. “It’s not about money, it’s about ethics.” Another person responded saying, “Doing this job is like doing a hit for the mob, and being surprised later when the mob takes you out too.” Other users posted photos of Hische’s house and speculated about her wealth and finances.

“感到恶心，”一位用户写道。“这不是钱的问题，这是道德问题。”另一个人回应说：“做这份工作就像是为黑帮执行暗杀任务，事后却对黑帮也把你干掉感到惊讶。”其他用户甚至发布了希舍房子的照片，并对她的财富和财务状况进行了猜测。

Hische had expected some pushback from the artist community, but the level of vitriol caught her off guard. Even if people didn’t like Meta, she felt the company should be commended for hiring an independent artist rather than using generative AI. But the backlash made it clear just how unpopular generative AI has become in some circles, to the point that working for one in any capacity is seen as a betrayal.

希舍预料到会遭到艺术界的抵制，但这种恶毒程度让她措手不及。即使人们不喜欢 Meta，她也觉得该公司聘请独立艺术家而不是使用生成式人工智能是值得称赞的。但这种强烈的反弹清楚地表明，生成式人工智能在某些圈子里是多么不受欢迎，以至于为相关项目工作在任何程度上都被视为一种背叛。

We spoke on the phone last week about the backlash, her design process, and whether she was instructed to not make the Muse logo look like a butthole. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

上周，我们通过电话讨论了这次反弹、她的设计过程，以及她是否曾被指示不要让 Muse 的标志看起来像个肛门。本次采访经过编辑，以求清晰和简洁。

Zoë Schiffer: In your newsletter, you acknowledge that people have complicated feelings about Meta and about AI. Did that make it hard for you to take this job?

佐伊·希弗（Zoë Schiffer）：在你的通讯中，你承认人们对 Meta 和人工智能有着复杂的感情。这是否让你在接这份工作时感到困难？

Jesscia Hische: The last year or two, my client work has been really slow, and my client work is what supports the other things I do, because the brick-and-mortar businesses are not hugely profitable. My margins are razor thin. I think between the two shops, I had like $10,000 in profit last year. I can’t sustain myself on $10,000 a year. So when the Meta project came around, it was like, alright! Let’s get some money in the account so I can pay my staff and I don’t have to feel so stressed out every time I have to run a pay cycle.

杰西卡·希舍：过去一两年，我的客户工作非常少，而客户工作是我维持其他业务的经济来源，因为实体店的利润并不高。我的利润率极低。我想去年两家店加起来的利润大约只有 1 万美元。我无法靠一年 1 万美元维持生活。所以当 Meta 的项目出现时，我就想，好吧！让账户里进点钱，这样我就能给员工发工资，也不必每次发工资时都感到压力巨大。

What were you hired to do, specifically?

你具体受雇做什么？

I specialize in logo refreshes. I did the redesign of Squier from Fender, I redesigned Jeni’s Ice Cream a few years ago and did Southern Living magazine. When I work on logos, I want them to look like they went to the spa for a weekend—not that they went and got a ton of plastic surgery, you know? Just fresh and new, where you’re like, “Oh, something’s different. I can’t tell what, but I like it.”

我擅长标志翻新。我曾为 Fender 旗下的 Squier 进行过重新设计，几年前我还重新设计了 Jeni’s Ice Cream，并为《Southern Living》杂志做过设计。当我设计标志时，我希望它们看起来像是去过周末水疗中心一样——而不是去做了大量的整形手术，你懂吗？只是焕然一新，让你觉得：“哦，有什么地方不一样了。我说不上来，但我喜欢它。”

The [Meta] team had done an exploration of the M internally. They knew it wasn’t quite right. It’s just a bunch of product designers and engineers designing type. Some of them are very skilled at typography, but it’s just such a super unique thing to be able to draw letterforms. They wanted to refine what they had already done in terms of the M. It was a huge sprint for that M. I did the work in two days. There were 32 different versions. The logotype took another two weeks.

[Meta] 团队在内部对 M 进行了探索。他们知道它不太对劲。那只是一群产品设计师和工程师在设计字体。他们中有些人非常擅长排版，但绘制字形是一项非常独特的技能。他们想完善已经在 M 上所做的工作。那个 M 的设计是一场巨大的冲刺。我用了两天时间完成了工作。当时有 32 个不同的版本。标识字体又花了两个星期。

What did the team tell you they wanted to change?

团队告诉你他们想改变什么？

They had drawn the M as a single stroke, a vector stroke. It was the same width all the way around. When something is just a mono-weight stroke with no adjustments, there’s not a lot of subtlety around the shape. This is where the fun happens with type design. As strokes touch each other and join, it creates this heavier pocket, visually. You get these little inky moments. And what type designers often do is sort of play with subtracting and adding bits of weight. Their big ask was, “We want this thing to feel inspiring and creative and to get people thinking that Muse is a fun thing you can play with, not that it’s like this very rigid, engineered, cold thing.”

他们把 M 画成了一条单一的笔画，一条矢量笔画。它的宽度在各个地方都是一样的。当一个东西只是一个没有调整的等宽笔画时，形状上就没有太多的微妙之处。这正是字体设计的乐趣所在。当笔画相互接触和连接时，在视觉上会产生一个更重的区域。你会得到这些细小的墨迹感。字体设计师经常做的是通过减少和增加一点重量来玩转设计。他们最大的要求是：“我们希望这个东西感觉鼓舞人心且富有创意，让人们认为 Muse 是一个你可以与之互动的有趣事物，而不是一个非常僵硬、工程化、冰冷的东西。”

How much do you get paid for a project like this?

你做这样一个项目能拿到多少钱？

I charged what I thought was an amazing fee for a two-day sprint for a big company, which was like $12,500. That’s an amazing amount of money to make in two days, but it’s not life-changing.

我为一家大公司两天的冲刺工作收取了我认为非常可观的费用，大约是 12,500 美元。在两天内赚到这么多钱确实很棒，但这并不能改变生活。

Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang has been talking about the logo recently, noting he’s happy it doesn’t look like a butthole, unlike some of Meta’s competitors.

Meta 首席人工智能官亚历山大·王（Alexandr Wang）最近一直在谈论这个标志，并指出他很高兴它看起来不像肛门，这与 Meta 的一些竞争对手不同。

I do think the “don’t make it a butthole logo” thing was probably something they had top of mind internally. But for me, the discussions were more about looking at the Meta infinity loop logo and wanting the Muse logo to look like it was part of the same universe.

我确实认为“不要把它做成肛门标志”可能是他们内部最关心的事情。但对我来说，讨论更多的是关于观察 Meta 的无限循环标志，并希望 Muse 的标志看起来像是同一个宇宙的一部分。

How did you decide to start talking about the work publicly?

你是怎么决定公开谈论这项工作的？

I wanted to share it because I like sharing about my work. Within my newsletter group, everybody knows that my husband worked for Meta for ages, so they know that I have an association with the company. I also wanted to acknowledge that AI is a very sensitive topic for people, but acknowledge it to an audience that understands my relationship to both Meta and AI.

我想分享它，因为我喜欢分享我的工作。在我的通讯群组里，每个人都知道我丈夫在 Meta 工作了很长时间，所以他们知道我和这家公司有联系。我也想承认人工智能对人们来说是一个非常敏感的话题，但我是向那些了解我与 Meta 和人工智能之间关系的受众承认这一点。

I noticed that you responded to a bunch of the people criticizing you. Why?

我注意到你回复了许多批评你的人。为什么？

Generally, if something happens online where there’s a misunderstanding, I’ve been able to just come at [whoever is posting about me…

通常情况下，如果网上发生了误解，我都能直接去和（任何发布关于我的人……）沟通。