BrandCrowd is a device for creating logos and different inventive enterprise property, letting organizations put their branding on the whole lot from enterprise playing cards and social media posts to flyers and menus. It’s a useful device for individuals who don’t wish to shell out the massive bucks for another person to design a customized asset, however does it truly produce high quality merchandise? Let’s dive into the small print and discover out. 

BrandCrowd: The Good and the Unhealthy 

Although BrandCrowd markets itself as a free brand generator, it stands other than the gang. The emblem high quality is excessive, there are surprising advantages to purchasing a BrandCrowd brand (trace: you’ll be able to order branded gear!), and it’s simple to make use of. Nevertheless it’s not fairly as free as you’d assume and the pricing construction is tough to pin down. On this part, we’ll discover the corporate’s strengths and weaknesses intimately.

What BrandCrowd Is Good At

BrandCrowd stunned us with how simple it’s to make use of and with the standard of its merchandise—particularly the logos. We additionally love that it comes with options for testing your designs. Let’s take a deeper have a look at BrandCrowd’s strengths. 

Straightforward to make use of: Once you’re a brand new or younger firm, rather a lot rests on getting your brand and branding good. That’s why we favored how simple it’s to get one thing made on BrandCrowd. Once you click on on the brand creation device, for instance, you’ll see a spot to enter your enterprise title and one other to enter key phrases. It’s enjoyable to see what BrandCrowd comes up with as you modify the key phrase combo. 

In considered one of our searches, we solely used one key phrase: “vineyard.” We acquired quite a lot of normal wine-influenced brand selections at first, however once we added “grapes” and “vines” to the key phrase part, our selections acquired extra detailed when it comes to each the design components and the general appear and feel.

Enhancing the logos is simple, too. Take one of many choices BrandCrowd has generated, then you’ll be able to edit the structure, add textual content, alter the colours, and even animate the brand. Creating flyers, postcards, letterheads, and social media posts is equally intuitive and straightforward on BrandCrowd, as nicely. 

On high of that, there’s a terrific data base of articles on the BrandCrowd web site. Overlaying a variety from a vital information on find out how to create a putting brand to lists that function dozens of examples on your inspiration, this useful resource makes getting probably the most out of BrandCrowd’s design instruments even simpler.

Asset selection: BrandCrowd presents a complete lot extra than simply logos. Want a template for a branded TikTok video or a Twitch banner? How about an Instagram Reel or a Zoom background? BrandCrowd has you coated. Contemplating that it’s been round since 2011, we’re impressed at how nicely BrandCrowd has stored up with client demand. 

And, you’re not even restricted to digital variations of those property. BrandCrowd will put your designs on all kinds of merchandise, from menus and enterprise playing cards to branded t-shirts,mouse pads, stickers, and extra. Once you end making a design, you’re capable of order bodily and printed merchandise proper from throughout the checkout course of. 

The costs are a little bit excessive however transport is free. Plus, you don’t need to endure the effort of taking your information to third-party printing corporations. 

Polling function: Getting suggestions in your brand mockups might help you select a design that can actually stand out. That’s why we love BrandCrowd’s polling function. Whether or not this includes your group of co-founders or a wider array of stakeholders and even prospects, you should use this function to land one a variety that resonates with and appeals to everybody. 

Create a brand or different asset, then run a ballot that asks respondents to fee and evaluation it. Whether or not you’re utilizing utterly completely different choices or split-testing minor tweaks to a single design, you will get actual suggestions from actual individuals about which variation is the most effective. Share the ballot simply with the entire world on social media or to your peer floor through a persistent hyperlink to the ballot. 

Truthfully, we had a little bit an excessive amount of enjoyable testing the polling function from each the logo-making and poll-responding sides. Whereas it’s not potential to succeed in a focused viewers through BrandCrowd itself, the simple embedding of the ballot and shareable hyperlink allows you to use the channels you favor to get this suggestions.

Design high quality: Some brand turbines on the market pull generic icons from a library and slap one thing primary collectively. For instance, one free brand generator we examined in the identical approach as BrandCrowd produced a purple brand with the phrases Greenfield Grapevines underneath a basketball court docket for no obvious cause. 

Each the design templates that actual BrandCrowd customers and companions have created and the design creation wizard on the coronary heart of BrandCrowd’s platform carry out a lot better and extra intelligently. 

Since BrandCrowd makes use of designs made by actual individuals, you’ll see the designer’s username beneath any possibility. Then, ranging from a higher-quality place to begin, you’ll be able to go onto tweak colours, lettering, and different components to make one thing one-of-a-kind that additionally suits your organization’s identification like a glove.

With any search, you’ll see pages and pages of selections. Whereas logos and social media posts appear to supply the next diploma of high quality than among the different asset choices, you’ll have a whole bunch of choices to select from (which, in fact, may be edited to your coronary heart’s content material). And, as soon as you purchase a brand, you personal it, providing you with the liberty to make use of it to model all of the enterprise collateral you need for so long as you’d like. 

Buyer expertise: Once you buy a brand from BrandCrowd, you gained’t have the ability to obtain it instantly. And that’s a superb factor. For every brand bought, the BrandCrowd group will ensure your brand appears to be like good on PNG, PDF, EPS, JPG, and SVG information. You’ll then obtain these information in an e mail. 

If you would like the group to tweak a coloration or font after the actual fact, they’ll do it for you freed from cost. Extra in depth edits require a month-to-month subscription to will let you work instantly with considered one of BrandCrowd’s in-house designers. We like that this degree of service meets the center floor between an expert design agency and a normal DIY brand generator. 

What BrandCrowd Is Missing 

Even the most effective services and products include weaknesses, and BrandCrowd is not any completely different. From a slippery pricing construction to minimal buyer assist choices, right here’s the place we discovered the corporate missing. 

Unclear pricing construction: The primary factor that bothered us about BrandCrowd is which you could’t discover the pricing web page till you’ve gone by way of the entire course of of choosing a brand, making any edits, and clicking the Obtain button. Nearly each different service on-line has a separate, simply accessible, and extremely seen pricing web page so you’ll be able to assess the associated fee earlier than taking any preliminary steps.

Having to go partway by way of the client’s journey first is irritating. It additionally makes it tough to search out pricing details about different property past logos, a few of which have distinctive pricing and related prices. You’ll be able to cancel the subscription after you obtain your information, however you’ll lose the aptitude for limitless edits and downloads that include that membership. 

You will get a free brand with none of this problem, however these designs are, naturally, fairly restricted. The true draw for BrandCrowd is the designer-produced logos which you could make your personal, it’s essential to join a BrandCrowd subscription to obtain and use these. 

Buyer assist: The one technique to attain a buyer assist agent for BrandCrowd is thru e mail, Fb, Instagram, or Twitter. To their credit score, the client assist group does reply shortly, based mostly on our checks and what we present in person opinions. However we might have cherished to see a reside chat function no less than so you will get questions on managing subscriptions, buying licenses, and dealing with a BrandCrowd designer answered in actual time versus ready on e mail replies.

Costly upsells: This wouldn’t be a lot of a problem if BrandCrowd didn’t market itself as a “free” brand maker at first. Technically, the precise making of the brand is free, sure. You don’t need to pay to search out and edit neat designs. However in fact, you’ll need to pay to make use of the brand, until you select one of many extra generic free-to-use designs. 

And, it’s a must to watch out when you get to the checkout course of. You’ll be inspired to buy BrandCrowd’s web site builder, work with a designer (for an additional $199 a month), and buy branded merchandise. This final possibility is definitely fairly neat, however the costs usually are not low cost. All these potential bills might drive the worth of your brand approach up, particularly if you happen to’re not cautious and don’t need any of those providers within the first place.

BrandCrowd Pricing & Choices 

BrandCrowd presents customized logos and property at a worth your group—whether or not massive or small—can really feel comfy with. It’s also possible to use the location’s builders for enterprise playing cards, social media posts, letterheads, and extra. Both approach you go, you’ll find yourself having to pay for a BrandCrowd subscription for utilization rights and the power to obtain designs in high-resolution information, until you go for one of many free (albeit extra generic) design choices.

BrandCrowd Paid Plans

BrandCrowd allows you to whip up logos and a variety of different branded property. It’s also possible to get printed merchandise or collateral that includes these designs, faucet into BrandCrowd’s community of designers for extra hands-on asset creation, and use their free related providers like their enterprise title generator.

However how a lot does this value? After finalizing the design of your brand, you’ll be greeted with a web page that provides you two choices: the Premium Brand Pack plan, which prices you $60 for one 12 months, or the identical package deal with BrandCrowd’s primary website builder included, which runs $84 yearly. You’ll be able to go for month-to-month billing for both possibility as a substitute, however it is going to elevate the month-to-month fee by a number of {dollars}.

Once you buy the Premium Pack, you robotically obtain a normal license. With this license, you get non-exclusive rights to make use of the design for no matter you need. If you wish to purchase unique rights to the brand design or purchase it out utterly, you’ll need to pay the next payment. 

Each plans additionally provide you with entry to different property and collateral you’ll be able to design on BrandCrowd. Nevertheless, the web site builder doesn’t appear to be value the additional value until you wish to use it for shortly spinning up a really primary touchdown web page. We wouldn’t suggest it for constructing your enterprise’s residence on the net.

It’s also possible to select to work one-on-one with a designer in BrandCrowd’s community of freelance companions for $199 a month. 

Or, get your design printed on merchandise, attire, or large-format shows like fliers and banners. Print providers from BrandCrowd differ a superb deal in worth relying on what you’re getting printed, however transport tends to be free on something you order.

Whereas the plans may be inconvenient if you happen to’re on the lookout for an answer to create only one asset like a brand or enterprise card, they ship actual worth whenever you begin with a brand and apply to different property that the majority companies want for his or her on-line properties. Preserving all of it on one platform additionally helps keep consistency in model and really feel throughout property. 

Abstract

BrandCrowd is a boon for companies that don’t wish to pay a designer to whip up important model supplies like logos, enterprise playing cards, and letterheads, in addition to materials and property for social media channels and internet advertising. It’s an extremely easy-to-use service and comes with an astounding variety of templates to get began from. In the event you’re simply beginning out with your enterprise or are an present SMB seeking to rebrand affordably, BrandCrowd is an efficient possibility for you.