Reviews and expert opinion BrandCrowd

One of the Simplest Logo Makers

BrandCrowd was founded over a decade ago, at the exact same time as its sister-site DesignCrowd, and yes, brought to you by the same people. The general idea is to provide quality logos, as fast as possible… but can they pull it off?

This logo maker is available only in English, and it does not support non-Latin characters. At least, it doesn’t work with the simplified Chinese characters I tested. Accent marks and the tilde (in the Spanish letter “ñ,” for example) do work just fine, though. So if you want to make a logo for that French-Mexican fusion cafe you’ve always dreamed of, you’re good to go.

No, it wouldn’t have French food. Just Mexican food, with French wine. And, ideally, Cuban coffee. Just in case you were wondering.

In addition to making logos, BrandCrowd offers customized web design services with hosting, and graphic printing services. All packages are paid – there are no free plans and no free samples. Everything is focused on bringing your logo to life with minimal fuss.

Does that make for a good logo, though? Well, I decided to find out as part of my quest to find the best new logo for Website Planet. It’s been one heck of a journey, and you can read all about it here.

If you’re short on time with a limited budget, I recommend you hire a logo designer through Fiverr instead – gigs start at $5! The platform’s easy to use, there are thousands of freelancers to choose from, and you’ll only pay once for your design.

Want to know how BrandCrowd did? Watch the video or keep reading.

BrandCrowd Does What It Set Out to Do

Unlike many of its competitors, BrandCrowd is not about generating the perfect logo based on numerous questions, and it’s not about AI or machine learning. (So when our robot overlords take over, BrandCrowd will likely not be to blame.) It’s about you building a logo, fast, with the help of a fairly large library of pre-made icons and layouts. And well, it does that successfully.

I’ve criticized other logo generators in the past that used this same approach, but that was because their logos were outdated and they had a very small selection. By contrast, BrandCrowd currently has over 40,000 designs (in multiple formats) to pull from and they’re (mostly) quite good.

Fortunately, while the icon library could be bigger (40,000 + icons seems like a lot until you try to design one for literally every business need), BrandCrowd does offer decent customization. It’s not a full-fledged graphics program.

There is a fairly wide selection of fonts and you can pick from a variety of preset colors for each element. Or, you can use the color picker to get just about any color you want, which isn’t as common a feature as it should be. Some of the logos support gradients, but not all.  Also, your final download comes with a PNG file that has a transparent background.

You can easily change the layout by using the preset layouts or by using the drag-and-drop feature. Logo icons are logically categorized and you can customize the color for each.

As far as I can tell, there’s no functional limit on the number of characters in your company name or slogan. However, if your company name is 129 characters long, I would strongly suggest abbreviating it.

Every Logo Is Partially Handcrafted

So yeah, those 40,000 icons? I thought I’d specify that they aren’t from an icon set or anything. Each was designed on its own by a professional logo designer. I saw plenty that didn’t meet my needs, but none that I thought were actually bad or too “basic,”  like the stuff you’d find in an app menu. There’s quality there.

You Can Buy Premade Identities

Don’t want to go to the trouble of customizing everything about your own logo? Want a logo no one else is going to have? BrandCrowd also sells pre-made identities and logos that can only be sold once. If you buy one, it’s yours and only yours. These are naturally a bit more expensive than logos from the logo maker, but you can make an offer to the designer that’s lower than the listed price.

There’s no guarantee they’ll agree to your offer, but you can try.

Social Media Templates

All BrandCrowd plans allow access to a wide range of social media designs (e.g., Instagram posts) These ready-made templates look decent, and you can create some quite unique designs with the available customization tools.

You Can Get a Professional Involved

A fairly reasonable payment will get you access to a professional designer. If you’ve got a logo almost where you want it, or you’ve reached the limits of what BrandCrowd’s editor can do, this might be a good option for you. It won’t be necessary for most users, but it’s a good benefit to have access to.

My Experience With BrandCrowd

The full journey is in the video I made, so I won’t go over every step. I just browsed around for a few logos I liked, then narrowed down my choices, and played with the design until I liked it. As mentioned in the video, I wish there was a way to get more precise spacing between elements rather than manually dragging and dropping them.

But overall, I didn’t have any major issues, other than being tired while I made that video, and thus a little slow to find bits of the user interface I needed.

I can’t figure out a way to blame BrandCrowd for that, though. It’s on me.

Ultimately, I ended up making this logo here:

See what I mean about the spacing? I might have to fix up that text alignment later if my bosses at Website Planet really like this one. I’m proud of the shades of blue I chose, though.

Pretty Straightforward Overall with a Few Hiccups

BrandCrowd is very focused on getting you up and running with a logo in minutes, when possible. Sure, picking out your base logo and customizing it to your liking can take a while, especially if you’re picky like me. But the process itself is simple and quick, and if you’re not as particular as I am, getting a logo in ten minutes is entirely possible. It shouldn’t take you more than an hour or so if you take it slow.

Heck, you can get it done in about three minutes, if you click on the first logo you see, don’t change much, and are quick with your credit card details. Again, I wouldn’t recommend doing it like that, but you can.

You Can Save Your Projects (But Not Delete Them?)

And once again, it’s time for me to reiterate how the ability to save your projects and return to them later is so crucial. On BrandCrowd, your logo drafts are weirdly resilient and I haven’t actually found a “delete” button yet.

You Can Search through All Logo Options First

Not only can you start building a logo before you log in, but you can also see all 40,000+ logos, browse, and search them. You can find out if BrandCrowd has what you need before even typing in your company name. I have to appreciate that sort of transparency when so many of their competitors will try to throw you straight into the process of building a logo and hope you’ll be too invested to leave.

Imagine a scenario where stores that allow you to create your own teddy bears become excessively pushy with upselling. BrandCrowd does engage in upselling, but it is far less obnoxious compared to those situations.

You Can Get Your Logo Printed Easily

Like many other logo generators, and indeed like its sister website DesignCrowd, BrandCrowd offers you many things to print your logo on: hats, T-shirts, mugs, business cards, mousepads, and stickers. So yeah, you can do all of that with minimal effort, and for pretty reasonable prices, so long as you’re not buying in bulk.

Overall, the interface is mostly self-explanatory, and you’ll catch on quickly.

The website can be a tiny bit confusing to navigate at times. I would encourage new users to click around at will. There is an undo button, after all.

It’s Not as Good as It Could Be

Support for BrandCrowd is… reasonable. It’s tied into the same support system as DesignCrowd, but as DesignCrowd is (probably) their real money maker, BrandCrowd support generally seems to go a bit slower. It’s functional, though, and the support staff is helpful. You’ll usually get your questions answered on the same day unless you ask your questions really late at night.

There is a useful, if basic, FAQ on the website. There’s also a blog that regularly posts logo design tips and logo design inspiration articles. None of this information is particularly in-depth or detailed, but it could help you get started faster.

You can, technically, phone them (I asked), but the number isn’t listed because it’s mostly supposed to be used for DesignCrowd support, not BrandCrowd. But if you call the number provided in the email, they will apparently try to help you out.

Email

First, I asked them if I could call them. That’s when they told me that they prefer to keep BrandCrowd business to email, but even so, they were pretty accommodating.

I asked them if there was somewhere I could see my bill online. Apparently, there isn’t, but they’ll happily resend your bill if you lose the first email. I wasn’t overjoyed to see the upselling in this second email, especially as the service offered didn’t have much to do with my request.

Social Media

Lastly, I asked them on Twitter (which is listed on their contact page in a way that suggests you can look for support there) how often new logos get added. Now, this likely isn’t a question they could answer easily, because design takes time, and so does talking to designers. An estimate would have been appreciated, but they couldn’t provide that, either.

It would be nice to get some data on the icon library. That library is the backbone of the whole service, and it would be cool to know when you can log in and see something new.

Overall, I wasn’t impressed by the replies I received. If you want to see what excellent customer support looks like, take a look at my 99designs review.

You Can Get a Good-Looking Logo without Breaking the Bank

The prices for almost everything are perfectly reasonable. The Premium package, in particular, is affordable while giving you everything you need to use the logo in both digital and print products. It also provides infinitely scalable formats to edit in a vector graphics program like Adobe Illustrator. If everything looks good, remember to cancel your subscription after purchasing your logo.

If you purchase the Premium + Website pack, BrandCrowd will also help you launch a mobile-friendly website to feature your new logo. It’s not a complete website but more of a landing page your followers can land on after clicking your link in bio.

Then, there’s the add-on mentioned above, which gets you service from a professional designer to edit your logo. If you want “unlimited” edits to your logo, you might want to consider one of the greatly-discounted annual plans.

If you’re using BrandCrowd because you don’t want to bother with a regular graphics editor and you plan to make a lot of social media posts with your logo on them, its plan might be worth it.

Usage Rights

When you buy a logo from the logo generator, there are three licenses you can opt for. The Standard License gives you non-exclusive rights to use it anywhere you want. The Buy-Out License removes the logo from the store, ensuring you’re the last person to use it. (Though people who bought it before you still get to use it.) The Exclusive License removes the logo from the store and gives you all intellectual rights, forever.

Most people will probably only need the Standard license. But if you have the cash to spend, and you really want to make sure no one “steals” your BrandCrowd-made logo, you have the option.