AI Logo Makers Vs Working With Designers: Tackling the Design Dilemma

Your brand’s logo is the cornerstone of your entire branding strategy. With such weight on its shoulders, choosing the right approach to designing it can feel overwhelming. Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the design world by storm, and there is a lot of hype about AI logo makers. But are they truly a match for human designers, especially when it comes to a critical brand element like your logo?

Through this blog, we dive into the world of AI logo makers versus human designers. We’ll explore the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to help you decide which is the better fit for your brand. Let’s get started! 

Top AI Logo Makers in the Market & What They Offer 

To begin with, it helps to have common ground to compare the performance of all these tools on our list. So, here’s a brief description of a fictional brand we created with ChatGPT. 

• Brand Name: Pet Paradise
• Industry: Pet Care and Products
• Colors: Pastel Blue, Pastel Pink, White
• Fonts: Playful and casual 
• Preferences: Cute, friendly design with pet silhouettes.

We’ll have a crack at all the logo design tools and show you what the process and the results look like. But before, that here’s a quick overview of their pricing and scope. 

Let’s now take a look at the ups and downs of working with these tools. 

1. Looka 

After the initial screen as seen in the above image, there is a simple wizard that lets you customize various parameters like your industry, colors, and more. 

Upon choosing them, a bunch of logo designs are ready in seconds.

You can then choose the one that resonates with you the most and refine it in their editor. So, that’s pretty much about the process. Now let’s talk about some pros and cons. 

Pros 

Looka displays a host of mockups to help you visualize what your logo looks like on diverse surfaces like a t-shirt or store signage. 

Everything we explored until this stage, right up to the mockups, we were able to try out without even creating an account. That’s pretty good since you do not have to spend time and effort creating an account without even knowing whether the tool will be a good fit. 

Cons 

While you can choose from a set of font styles, you cannot choose specific fonts or upload your own unless you choose the Brand Kit subscription priced at $96 / year. 

Some of the designs are repetitive meaning that you do not get too many unique options to compare and shortlist at the first go. 

2. Tailor Brands 

The logo design interface here is somewhat similar to that on Looka and the tool generates a good assortment of logos rapidly. 

Pros 

Among all the tools we compared, Tailor Brands is one of the most user-friendly options out there. While on the surface it feels like the rest, there are little things like the option where you choose the type of logo you like – instead of presenting you with too many options and making it difficult for you to choose they categorize the designs so it’s easier to register what you are looking for. 

The sample applies to choosing font styles as well. Overall, you do not have to spend a lot of time trying to understand the tool before actually working on your logo. 

You also get full ownership of your logo even with the Basic plan while most other tools call for a higher-priced plan to gain ownership. 

Cons 

Several other tools let you at least take a peek at your design without creating an account. Whereas on Tailor Brands, after choosing all your requirements, you are prompted to create an account to view your designs and further refine them. 

The pricing page also does not appear until you create your account. Which means that you have to create an account just to explore and understand whether this is a good fit for you. 

3. Logo.com 

Logo.com is a great option that is easy to use and fast. It also offers plenty of logo design options to choose from. 

Instead of the usual questions about your role in the business and some keywords relevant to your business to generate the initial drafts. This makes the process quick but also limited when it comes to upfront customization. 

Pros 

Logo.com comes with a feature-packed design editor that lets you fine-tune your design easily. There was also a good assortment when it comes to logo design styles. 

One of the major differentiators is that this is one of the very few AI logo makers that let you download your initial logo draft for free – even without a watermark. Along with the logo files you also get the Brand Board with details about colors and other elements of your logo. Making it easier to have a risk-free trial run. 

Cons 

While many other AI logo makers let you visualize your final design through their mockups, Logo.com lacks this option. 

Since you cannot choose vital components like color schemes and logo design type at the get-go, you cannot narrow down your options initially. But yes you can filter the ideas displayed by choosing individual parameters. 

4. Design.com  

Design.com offers a long list of design tools including an AI logo maker. What we observed is that the process itself is pretty smooth and the logo design options were more vibrant and diverse in comparison with other AI logo makers. Additionally, the designs load faster as well. 

Pros 

One of the notable pros is that if you have explored all the options to tweak your design and still not satisfied with the results you can request further changes for free when you choose one of the paid plans. 

Additionally, once your final version is ready, you can also preview an animated version of the logo to add to your video intros and outros or even your website. 

Cons 

While you can preview your logo design on multiple designs and surfaces before downloading your design, you need a paid plan to download it. 

5. LogoAi

LogoAi is yet another convenient AI logo maker that comes with a variety of customization options to help refine your logo to perfection. 

Pros 

The logo design editor is pretty neat with handy editing options. Additionally, you can also request manual changes to your logo at an extra cost of $40. But remember this only supports 3 revisions to your designs. 

Another key point to note is that LogoAi has an integrated AI icon generator within the design editor. This lets you generate unique icons for your logo from text prompts. This lets you choose something unique if you don’t like any from their standard library of logo icons. 

Cons 

While the first few designs are visible without creating an account, to view more, you need to sign up, similar to Tailor Brands. Moreover, the designs are all displayed with a watermark until you purchase them. 

Overall, the editor also seems to have fewer editing options compared to several other AI logo makers. 

We also noticed that despite selecting the industry, the logo designs generated initially did not carry relevant symbols. Manually selecting symbols later generates a few relevant ones but again the options were pretty limited in comparison with the other tools we experimented with. 

One other major difference is that once you purchase the design and download your logo file, the brand name and symbol can only be revisited and revised for up to 3 days from the date of purchasing the design. 

Having discussed some of the well-known AI logo makers let’s now talk about some of the common benefits and challenges of working with them.  

AI Logo Makers: A Few Common Strengths 

Ease of use 

Most of the top-rated AI logo makers in the market come with an easy-to-use web interface. Their design wizards make it easy even for people with no design experience to quickly create their own logos. 

With most of them, all you have to do is to key in your brand name followed by a few more parameters like: 

• Your industry
• Some logo style preferences 
• Colors for your logo
• Your company name and slogan
• Types of symbols to include
• Fonts/font styles 

Speed of delivery 

We cannot deny the fact that AI logo makers are the fastest way to get your logo. Once you have all your requirements, a few quick minutes are all it takes to get your logo ready with some mockups, and multiple versions depending on the plans you choose. 

Therefore, it all boils down to what you prioritize when it comes to logo design – a faster delivery or a unique design that brings long-term benefits. For the former, AI logo makers solve the purpose but for the latter, there is still a lot of gap with using this option.   

Option to maintain your creative reins 

The below image shows the logo design editor interface of Logo.com. 

As can be seen in the snapshot, you get to endlessly experiment with variations based on various parameters. From swapping the current colors with new ones to adding new symbols, you can let your creative juices flow without a barrier. Therefore, these AI logo makers feel like the best choice when you want to maintain your creative reins. When you wish to exercise your creative freedom and retain full control over your logo design but do not have design experience. 

You feel like you are in the driver’s seat and this gives a sense of accomplishment to small business owners looking to create a logo of their own. 

Limitations of AI Logo Makers & How Designers Help Overcome Them 

Lack of originality 

At first glance, the logo designs look great, no doubt. However, look closely and you’ll see that several of the designs are repetitive and not very original especially when it comes to comparing the icons/symbols in the logo. 

The below images show the assortment of symbols on Tailor Brands and Looka respectively. As you can see some symbols are too generic and several of them are repeated. Which means a bigger chance of some other brand within your sector using the same symbol and creating a very similar-looking logo. 

Most of these AI logo makers seem to display combinations from millions of possibilities and hence the chances are slim but not zero. And a brand’s logo is one of those designs where originality has a huge weight. 

An unoriginal icon, a symbol same as the one used by your competitor drastically affects your brand’s authenticity. 

On the contrary, when working with designers, you can request original designs. From custom-illustrated symbols to add value to your logo to subtle yet significant changes to the typeface and colors, designers can help tweak the nuances of your logo to create something unique to your brand.

Intellectual property issues and ownership of your designs 

Some of these AI logo makers give you full ownership of your design at an additional cost. Some even allow trademarking your designs. But here’s the catch – the individual elements in your logo like the symbols cannot be trademarked. 

This is yet another issue that can be resolved by working with designers. Of course, there is a small gray area. Some freelance designers and design agencies do not allow full ownership of your design nor provide you with source files. On the other hand, some unlimited design services like KIMP allow full ownership of all your designs 

What’s more? You also get your source files so that you can make any edits you would like in your design in the future. 

Ordinary execution of the design 

Once you explore the available AI makers and try customizing them you might realize that several of these tools come with limited customization options. You are left with the evident details and direct symbolic references. In short, your logo design often looks “ordinary”. But what if you want to tell a story or paint a memorable picture of your brand through your logo? You will have to work with designers to achieve this. 

Designers can infuse their creativity into the process and create a logo design that packs layers of meaning within a small space. From manipulating negative spaces to adding unique icons to amplify the message, designers can create logos with hidden meanings. In other words, they can create a logo that’s hard to mimic. 

For instance, the design here draws inspiration from the name of the brand. AI logo makers might not always be able to come up with combined symbols and layered interpretations like this one. 

Limited revisions 

One of the biggest limitations when it comes to working with AI logo makers is the limited number of revisions most of them support. Some of them have time limits to let you make changes, while others have an upper cap on the number of revisions that can be made. 

And finally, there is also the problem of the limited number of parameters you can revise in order to personalize your designs. 

Working with designers, particularly with unlimited design services solves this problem. Not only do you get unlimited designs for a flat monthly fee but you also get unlimited revisions. You can go back to the team to tweak your logo – no matter how many iterations it takes to come up with the perfect one to represent your brand. 

Create Stunning Logos With KIMP 

In summary, weighing all these merits and limitations of AI logo makers, working with designers can be a much more practical option and a more efficient one too for crucial branding designs like the brand logo. While the ease of creating designs and the speed at which you get them make AI logo makers appear attractive, these cannot always come at the cost of the quality of your designs and the originality of the concept. 

Looking to explore the benefits of unlimited design services and don’t know where to begin? Start by signing up for KIMP’s 7-day free trial!