5 Branding Tools for Startups

A good brand gives your business identity and helps create awareness among customers, investors, partners and even your own employees. It differentiates you from competition and gives your customers a reason to choose your business over others. Branding is important for your business, especially as a startup or small to medium-size business.

As your business grows, it becomes important to focus on defining your brand identity, brand strategy, conceptualizing and designing your logo, designing your website as well as create marketing campaigns. But the most important step is to define your brand identity.

There are many different ways you can start to develop a brand identity with a branding toolkit for your brand. These include:

・Work with a branding agency

This can be an expensive and elaborate process that companies may choose to go through when they are at a more mature state.

・Work with different freelancers

This may involve a lot of coordination and specialist knowledge, as you will need to oversee the work and quality control yourself.

・Use an online branding tool

This could be a good option for startups and SMBs who are beginning their branding journey.

In this article, we cover some of the best branding tools in the market that can serve as a good starting base for your branding activities.

5 Branding Tools for Startups

1. Looka

Looka uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) for its design. Based on a selection from a range of 20 or so logo examples, the user can then customize their logo selection from a catalog of color palettes, shapes, symbols. Looka uses AI to further customize the logo. If you want to build a website, then there is a website builder available as part of a paid package.

[www.looka.com/-- Logo maker/website builder/AI design -- Paid]

2. Tailor Brands

Tailor Brands is another AI-powered design tool. It provides various designs based on a user’s branding preferences. Some customization is also possible. Apart from a logo maker, there is also a service that shows you how your design will look on social media as well as various social media templates. These are available with a monthly subscription.

[www.tailorbrands.com/ -- Logo maker/marketing/AI design -- Paid]

3. Canva

Canva is a well-established service that offers template-based design with a library of several designs and images to choose from. With a paid subscription, users can develop a brand kit which can help establish a brand identity. This part of the process is based on the user’s own experience and not AI so the services of a specialist may also be needed.

[www.canva.com/-- Logo maker/marketing -- Freemium]

4. ZeBrand

ZeBrand helps users define their brand vision with brand guidelines. This helps users express who they are right from the start.

ZeBrand’s AI-based design works with user input to create choices of font, logo, color palette, and visual assets. Additional features such as a social media kit, website templates and online support are also available as a paid service.

In addition to branding design, ZeBrand also focuses on brand strategy. "Brand DNA" is a framework to help you move step by step towards building a strong brand strategy.

[www.zebrand.com/-- Brand strategy/logo maker/marketing/AI design -- Freemium]

5. Brandmark

Brandmark offers AI-powered logos. The main service is based on creating logos. There is also an advanced service of having customized designs, colors, fonts etc to facilitate creating a full brand identity.

[www.brandmark.io/-- Logo maker/marketing/customized design - Paid]