How Looka and Brandmark Actually Build Logos
Looka and Brandmark both use AI (Artificial Intelligence – think of it like a smart robot designer that doesn’t sleep) to help you create logos. What they promise is simple: enter your brand info and get ready-to-use logo designs tailored to your business.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Here’s where things start to split in real-world usage. Let’s walk through what each platform actually does once you hit that first big button.
| Step | Looka | Brandmark |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Input | Company name, slogan, 3+ industry keywords, style preferences, symbol type | Just the name and a small description – no style preferences allowed |
| AI Suggestions | Dozens of options with real-time filtering for color, layout, and typography | Less than 10 design ideas shown at once, no live filtering |
| Editable Symbols | Change icons, spacing, size, and color with visual editor | Can change colors and text but not the icon itself |
| Export Formats | SVG, PNG, EPS, PDF – all sizes and backgrounds | PNG by default – SVG costs extra |
Most of my test logos from Looka felt more balanced out of the gate. For example, when entering “modern, tech, clean” as brand attributes, Looka prioritized bold sans-serif fonts with matching geometric icons. Brandmark, by comparison, created a few decent-looking marks, but almost all used soft script fonts — even though I hadn’t mentioned anything design-wise.
The smartest feature in Looka is probably its brand kit builder that spins out matching social media visuals, invoice headers, and email footers after you pick a logo. Brandmark doesn’t offer this — they give you a logo and you’re done unless you want to recreate that style manually.
The bottom line is, in terms of flexibility and applicability, Looka feels more like a full design hub while Brandmark behaves like a quick one-off generator.
Design Control and Logo Editing Differences
If you care about shaping the fine details — say, tweaking kerning (the spacing between letters), adjusting the curve in an icon, or leveling a tagline layout — this section matters more than the AI upfront.
Brandmark’s editor is extremely minimal. Once your logo is generated, you can only change the name, slogan, or color palette. You can’t adjust the shape, move elements, or swap the icon unless you re-run the AI with new input. That feels limiting if, for example, your logo icon is a rocket but it’s weirdly aligned off-center — there’s just no way to nudge it.
On Looka, after selecting a design, you get a full editor. Here’s what I could change during my last run:
- Color override — including individual color reassignment for text and icon separately
- Layout shift from stacked to inline or centered
- Swap the icon from a huge preloaded DB — searchable, thankfully
- Font pairs — suggested dynamically with previews
- Spacing tweak via drag control
Editing changes on Brandmark save instantly (there’s no Save button, it just happens), but sometimes I noticed weird glitches where hitting “Undo” did nothing or ran an old change. Looka, on the other hand, auto-saves plus has proper snapshots, and you can duplicate earlier versions without affecting your current one — essential during A/B logo testing.
Finally, Brandmark exports only in PNG (transparent background) unless you pay more for SVG. But SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is important because it lets you resize the logo infinitely without distortion. All of Looka’s paid plans include both raster (e.g. PNG, JPG) and vector formats by default.
Ultimately, if you care about post-AI customization, Looka wins hard here.
Real Branding Scenarios That Exposed Weak Points
It’s one thing to generate a pretty logo, but things get rough when you apply it across business cards, masks, or social headers. During an actual brand refresh workflow I did last month for a friend’s small skincare brand, these differences became more visible.
Here’s how Looka held up:
- Auto-generated invoice header matched social media avatar styling
- Scaled seamlessly to Shopify store favicon — no pixelation in browser tab
- Printed clearly on dark corrugated product boxes (PNG + white background version was included)
With Brandmark:
- No favicon version was provided — I had to open the PNG in Illustrator, crop it, save again as .ico
- The logo looked fine on white but disappeared on black shirts — no preset dark-version included
- No square format — social avatars looked off-centre due to wide wordmark-only design
Also, during upload to platforms like Etsy, Brandmark’s PNGs often exceeded file size limits. Looka provided compressed versions under those thresholds by default.
To sum up, in production-level use across real branding scenarios, small gaps in Brandmark’s offering led to annoying bottlenecks.
Logo Variations and Brand Kit Availability
This is where Looka does something Brandmark completely skips: generating a full-on brand system around your logo.
Looka dishes out over a dozen variations once you finalize your core logo: monochrome, square, wide, color-inverted, and even paired backgrounds (e.g. green-on-white and white-on-green) for light and dark usage.
Here’s what Looka’s brand kit included during a January test for a fictitious coffee subscription company:
- Facebook cover, Instagram highlight, email signature block
- Business card template (with adjustable text for QR code link)
- Invoice header ready-to-export as PDF
- Letterhead docx (editable in Word)
Brandmark stops at “logo file” — no templates, no social visuals. That’s not ideal if your new logo needs to ship fast on Instagram, Slack, and invoices in the same week.
Finally, Looka provides a downloadable PDF brand guide with font names, color hex values, and usage tips — helpful for bringing new teammates or printers up to speed.
In the end, Looka’s extended brand outputs make it more useful for real businesses, not just one-off logo tasks.
Pricing Models and Hidden Cost Traps
This part requires full attention: both tools say “free to try,” but that phrase hides a lot of gotchas.
With Looka, you can generate and edit logos for free, but to download anything in high-res, you’ll pay once (single file) or subscribe monthly (full kit). With Brandmark, you pay for each downloaded logo separately, and if you want updates later (like name tweaks), that’s another charge.
Here’s a breakdown:
| Feature | Looka | Brandmark |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Logo View | Free with edits | Free but limited edits |
| High-Res Download | From about $20 | Starts around $25 |
| Brand Kit Access | Included in Pro/Limited plans | Not offered |
| Future Edits | Unlimited with subscription | Pay-per-edit |
Brandmark appears cheaper until you hit your third logo version — or need to fix a tagline. Then it spirals.
To wrap up, Looka’s all-in-one kit can be more cost-effective for anyone doing more than just a YouTube channel icon.
Which Tool to Use for What Scenario
If you’re building a business that will exist beyond a single link-in-bio moment, the added polish, branding assets, and flexibility from something like Looka pays off. But if you’re speed-testing a bunch of names for an ad campaign or building logos for short-term projects like school presentations or one-time events, Brandmark may work faster and cost less upfront.
Here’s how I’d use each tool:
- Use Looka: for starting new ventures, client branding packages, or anything you’ll scale cross-channel. It produces more usable, editable, and consistent outputs.
- Use Brandmark: when you need quick visuals to test with audiences, mockups, or builds that live for a few weeks. It’s AI-fast, but not studio-flexible.
Finally, Looka is useful even when the logo isn’t perfect — the editor helps you push it further. Brandmark feels like a take-it-or-leave-it deal.
Final Recommendation Based on Testing
After side-by-side testing, logo tweaking, export comparisons, and brand use case simulation, Looka consistently delivered a more pro-level result. The customization felt thoughtful, not overwhelming. The extras — color guides, print-ready files, brand-support docs — saved me from a lot of backtracking.
Brandmark surprised me with how fast it spits out decently attractive logos, especially simpler geometric ones. But it’s frustrating that even small changes (like icon swapping) often require rerunning the generator entirely, which resets any alignment or previous choices.
To conclude, Looka is your pick for a full brand foundation. Brandmark is better as a lightweight idea generator that doesn’t care about what happens post-download.
