AI made branding faster and more accessible, yet design-savvy founders keep making the same fundamental mistakes — here’s how our app solves this with strategy and customer insight.
Introduction
Most AI branding tools I tested in 2025 ask what colors you like and what logos catch your eye, which is like picking an outfit without knowing the occasion. At Brandician, we ask you dozens of strategic questions, then ask your customers how they feel about the answers.
While the market was flooded with logo generators and template libraries, we watched founders struggle with deeper issues. Their brands looked professional but felt hollow. Beautiful websites that nobody remembered. Polished presentations that didn’t convert.
The Brandician App was born out of a need to make strategic branding accessible, structured, and actually useful for founders who know the difference between branding and decoration.
This is about bridging the gap between what AI can automate and what human insight demands. Here’s how it started, and why we built it differently.
The Origin Story
From Slides to Algorithms
Apart from ongoing work with customers,since 2018, I have been running branding workshops, because everyone, from corporate teams at PortaOne and Mosaic to solopreneurs, wanted to bootstrap some branding and marketing efforts.
A pattern emerged: they either asked for what I call “just a logo refresh” (when they wanted something important and time-consuming done very quickly), or they would create something on their own and then ask me to “beautify” it. Either way, I’d spend hours deconstructing what they thought they wanted, figuring out what they actually needed, and rebuilding from scratch—usually taking at least three times longer than if we had just started with clear goals.
Shifting that mindset wasn’t easy. Each time, I had to go back to basics: storytelling and psychology first. A brand isn’t about you, it’s about your customers. That means asking the hard questions—Who are you serving? What do they need from you? Why should they care?
The magic happened when clients stopped fixating on visuals and started thinking about their customers’ frustrations and desires. That shift was powerful, but we kept repeating the same groundwork for every client, and sometimes even for the same client on a different project. The frameworks worked, but the process didn’t scale.
The Tipping Point: Crypto Valley and Andrew
The last workshop we ran was for several CV Labs (Crypto Valley startup Accelerator) startups. Andrew, CEO of PortaOne.com, saw the value of the presentation and the repetition, then asked: “Why not build an app out of this?”
That’s when Brandician.ai was born: not another logo generator, but an actual strategist in the loop.
“Why not build an app out of this?”
Andrew Zhilenko, CEO at PortaPne
What’s Wrong With Current AI Branding Tools
We Tested Them So You Don’t Have To
We audited the leading platforms—Canva, Looka, Renderforest, Brandmark, and a dozen more. Almost all follow the same playbook: “Pick your favorite color” or “Choose a logo style you like.”
The fundamental issues:
- Aesthetics before strategy: They start with how you want to look, not who you serve
- Generic results: Templates dressed up as custom solutions
- No emotional positioning: Beautiful outputs with zero psychological insight
- Missing storytelling: Colors and fonts without the narrative that makes them meaningful
Why That Matters
Here’s what we see all the time: Founders who wouldn’t cut their own hair before a big meeting feel confident art-directing their brand because they “have good taste”. Meanwhile, their business rolls out like a brand new car with mismatched wheels — full of potential, but not getting far.
Most AI tools feed this problem. They ask “What’s your favorite color?” like you’re decorating a nursery. But your brand isn’t about your taste—it’s about how your customer feels and decides. We can’t see our own faces without a mirror, and we can’t see our brands without outside perspective.
The 2025 AI Branding Landscape
We’ve been silent observer-participants of a fascinating tragedy. The AI branding market will pass $3 billion in 2025, but meanwhile, early-stage startups keep making the same 15 branding mistakes, and around 20% of startups fail due to poor marketing strategies.
Here’s the story playing out everywhere: Meet Jake, a tech entrepreneur with a €10K budget who needs to launch in 8 weeks. He opens Canva, picks a font that “feels modern,” chooses blue because of “trust” association and writes a copy that sounds like everyone else in his space. Three months later, he’s wondering why his beautifully designed website converts at 0.6%.
The research tells the real story. Startups think branding is just visual elements, but comprehensive branding affects how customers perceive your company as a whole. 60% of consumers avoid companies with logos that have weird or unappealing designs, even if they have good reviews. And companies that fail to keep their communication unified across channels create customer confusion.
Latest market research showed us that almost 80% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, but they’re using it wrong. They’re automating soup making without understanding the ingredients or how they interact with each other. They know the recipe steps but miss what actually makes customers feel satisfied or queasy.
That’s when we realized: Jake doesn’t need another logo generator. He needs a mirror that shows him how his customers actually see his business – not how he thinks they should.
What Makes Brandician Different
We borrowed from the best, then made it yours
Every Fortune 500 company uses the same foundation: consumer psychology, behavioral patterns, customer journey mapping, strategic positioning, and so on. We didn’t reinvent these wheels – we just made sure you don’t need a €20K consulting budget to access them. The frameworks that work for Nike will work for you too.
Questions that actually matter
Our AI doesn’t just gather answers — it thinks like a strategist. It challenges surface-level input with questions like “But how?” and “Why would they care?” until clarity emerges. Then it validates your thinking with actual customers. You stay in charge of the vision, but you can’t art-direct your way out of strategy.
The stuff you actually need (and the discipline to use it)
You walk away with everything: messaging that sounds like you, colors that mean something, fonts that fit your business personality. But here’s the thing – none of it comes from what you think looks cool. It comes from understanding who you’re trying to reach and why they should listen.
And then comes the hard part: actually using it. I’ve done pro-bono work for founders who got beautiful brand guidelines and then… ignored them completely. Used default document fonts, changed colors on a whim, wrote copy that sounded “better” than competitor’s. The strategy only works if you have the discipline to stick with it.
Who gets the most out of this
I really care about the people who remind me why I started this work.
The founder who’s been carrying this idea around for months, maybe years, knowing it could help people – but every time you try to explain it, something gets lost. Not looking for the flashiest brand; just want one that actually represents what you’re building.
The person running something small but meaningful, tired of feeling like you have to choose between “professional” and “authentic.” Want both, and deserve both.
The agency owner who genuinely cares about clients’ success, not just their retainer. Looking for tools that help you achieve better results, not just faster work.
The nonprofit director changing lives on a shoestring budget, needing a brand that honors that dedication without making it sound like corporate charity-speak.
The creative professional who’s watched too many good ideas die because they couldn’t communicate their value clearly enough.
What connects everyone is this: building something that matters, wanting it to reach the people it’s meant to serve. That’s not asking for much, but somehow it’s gotten really hard to find the right support for it.
Am I able to look at Brandician from a distance and stay neutral? Probably not. But I know for sure I want to help those who are passionate, not greedy. Smart, not selfish. People who care about making things better, not just just profitable.
That’s what the App is really about.
Conclusion: Beyond the Hype
The truth is, I can’t look at Brandician from the outside any better than you can look at your business objectively. But I know what drives this work: helping people who are building something meaningful.
Your idea deserves a brand that works as hard as you do. Not because it’s pretty, but because it’s true to who you serve and clear about why you matter.
Ready to start with strategy? Everything else will follow.
