We’re often asked about our business name and where “Razorfrog” came from. There’s a short answer in our FAQ, but you deserve to know more! With the recent rise of artificial intelligence writing and imaging services like GPT-3 and DALL-E-2, I’ve decided to share a bit more history with a little help from AI.
Back in 2001, I really liked frogs. I considered buying one as a pet, but somehow that didn’t pan out. I had a chameleon named Bob and enjoyed his companionship for a few years, and later on three turtles – but that’s not relevant here. Around the same time, I decided to register a domain name for various projects and a future web design business. In a roundabout chicken-and-the-egg scenario, I ended up coming up with the business tagline first: “The Cutting Edge of Web Design”. In retrospect 20 years later, I’ll admit it’s not great. But the “Cutting Edge” concept and the longing for a pet frog to be Bob’s companion – well that stuck and lead to Razorfrog Web Design. Here’s the first logo:
Look at that pixellated blob of a frog! We’ve come a long way in 20 years.
Now what about the AI I mentioned? Now that DALL-E-2 is available to a wider audience, I wanted to explore that cutting edge concept and web design lead by frogs and chameleons working together. I’m not an artist. But AI can be! Here are a few favorites:
Honestly the pixel art version is spot-on.
I mentioned GPT-3 as well – the AI that creates text instead of images. Here’s what it has to say about our founding:
Razor Frog Web Design was founded in 2009 by Jason A. Razor. The name was chosen to reflect the company’s focus on providing cutting edge web design and development services.
Surprisingly, not that wrong? Sometimes I wish my name was Jason A. Razor. The cutting edge bit though – well done AI!
And what if we feed that entire prompt into DALL-E-2? We get some fantastic, text driven logos that may have been helpful 20 years ago:
Some terrible, some maybe workable? I think our designers are safe for a little longer.
So is AI useful right now? Is it practical to use these services professionally? Does it fit our mission statement and AI policy?
Our mission at Razorfrog Web Design is to provide our clients with beautiful, custom WordPress websites that are easy to use and maintain. We strive to build long-term relationships with our clients by providing outstanding customer service and support. We are dedicated to helping our clients grow their businesses online and reach their goals.
We believe that everyone should have access to the same level of design and technology, regardless of their budget. That’s why we’re committed to using the latest in AI technology to help our clients create the best possible websites. We believe that AI can help our clients save time and money by automating tasks that would otherwise be manual and time-consuming. We also believe that AI can help our clients create better websites by providing them with insights that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
According to our policies just written by GPT-3, we’re in good shape! While I doubt we’ll use these services with clients anytime soon, it’s an incredibly interesting avenue to explore in the near future. We’ll be using these tools as they continue to develop and who knows, maybe AI will design your next website. In the meantime, please get in touch with our real humans, chameleons, and turtles at Razorfrog Web Design if you need web design services in San Francisco.
———-
Want to play with GPT-3 yourself? Here’s a quick introduction and how-to.
Unfortunately DALL-E-2 is still invite-only, but go sign up on their interest list!
