The Cost of a Logo | Hacker News Reader

The Cost of a Logo

huhmagazine.co.uk

101 pointsdamian200034 comments

Please note this mixes up the cost of a logo with the cost of a rebranding effort.

Creating the logo is only one very small piece of a rebrand.

Right, I'm sure the BP rebrand included new expensive signs at all of their gas stations. I isn't like the logo design walked off with hundreds of millions.

The designer does the rebranding, not the customer. This means generating all the new style guides, promotional material templates, business cards, even sometimes ad templates.

All of that derives from the logo/wordmark, but it's usually the majority of the work.

In the case of BP's rebranding, the numbers quoted here seem to be mainly BP-side spending, such as replacing signage on facilities and repainting vehicles: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1350238/BP-attacked-o...

I've read that the actual logo itself was only something like $4.6m. Which still seems like a ton really, but I guess easily worth it for a company of that scale.

It's interesting that the London Olympics logo is so embarrassing. The UK government have form, as the old Office of Goverment Commerce found to their chagrin. Their logo was even more naughty when rotated 90 degrees, and its logo was literally just the text OGC in a very elegant font. They paid £14,000 for it.

In fact, it's an awesome logo, if not for the unfortunate letter formation...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1901656/OGC-unveils-new-logo...

For the image...

http://www.google.com.au/search?tbm=isch&source=mog&...

Hmmm... second link not working!

Try:

http://www.chewdesign.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/latest/ogc-lo...

There is a direct correlation between the size of a company and the cost they pay for a logo, if twitter gave a marketing company the power to rebrand their logo now it would cost thousands.

There is a certain amount of responsibility in rebranding a large company and the myriad of brand documentation that goes with it.

It's funny how a startup only really cares about the logo looking nice but once they get big then it goes into the brand position and how that brand speaks to people.

I find it really interesting all this, I work for a company that specialises in branding (I work on the web side mind) but I know how much work companies are doing for the 400k price tags

> twitter gave a marketing company the power to rebrand their logo now it would cost thousands.

Many many thousands.

> but I know how much work companies are doing for the 400k price tags

I absolutely agree, by far the biggest portion of most redesigns isn't so much "just" the logo, it's changing the whole corporate design that is attached. Letterheads, website, slide design, business cards etc. etc. etc.

That is obviously only the case if you already have an established brand and established corporate culture. The small startup with just a handful of people doesn't have to worry to much (since not much is in place), but if you need to ("retroactively") change the specs for thousands of workers, subsidiaries etc, that quickly ramps up the price and the amount of work needed.

Twitter just redesigned their logo (slightly but still significantly.)

I wonder if it cost them much.

>To fix this, Lambie-Nairn simply straightened up the boxes, removed the dashes, and changed the font to Gill Sans - a typeface which had been invented 60 years ago, meaning there were no worries of it quickly looking outdated.

A really clever design principle. I've always thought it was most effectively used in film (e.g. Gattaca).

Shameless ripoff of http://stocklogos.com/topic/famous-logo-designs-and-how-much... posted 1 month ago

Wow, $100 million USD for the Accenture logo is baffling to me. I'm guessing there must be more being delivered behind the scenes that just the image. Anyone with experience in this area care to elaborate on how they come up with these prices?

They didn't pay $100m for a "logo", they paid for brand identity, marketing, they paid for their entire image to be changed. Same with BP.

Physical changeover of signage at all sites with the logo is another big cost. It usually must all be done at around the same time which often means higher after hours costs. For BP, this means all of their petrol stations.

Not to mention letterheads, business cards, envelopes, labels, internal paper forms. Both the sign and the printing industry benefit when a company rebrands.

As a random guess, I assume branding and messaging (advertisements, print material, ...) to get the word out there is included.

Not to mention focus groups, research across cultures, endless committee meetings, flying people around to take meetings etc.

There was significantly more behind the scenes. It would be very similar to what PwC just paid for (rebranding from PriceWaterhouseCoopers) [1].

Accenture was a rebrand of Andersen Consulting, the consulting division of Arthur Andersen, the large accountancy. The Big-5 accountancy gave them their entire brand position, so the creation of the Accenture logo involved all of the campaigns for them to emerge, not just the logo or mark. This is also why their ads are in every airport—the brand identify had to be built from scratch. For Accenture, it ended up being exceptional timing, considering the Enron scandal would emerge in a year or so and end up destroying Arthur Andersen.

Most of the accountancies examined spinning out their consulting divisions, similar to Accenture. I wouldn't say the results were as successful as Accenture for those that chose to rebrand. E&Y sold their group to Cap Gemini, becoming Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, and eventually just Capgemini. PwC was going to spin out their division as "Monday", but instead ended up selling the group to IBM (only to eventually restart again). KPMG had BearingPoint, which eventually went bankrupt. Deloitte contemplated rebranding their consulting group as Braxton, but it never happened.

All in all, seems like the $100M was worth it.

[1] http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662367/pwcs-mighty-morphin-logo...

The cost of a logo: $0

The cost of endless iterations, navigation of bureaucracy, corporate politics, egos, lack of respect for your field, phasing out the old stuff, documentation, pricing according to what the company can pay, etc.: what the market will bear

BP can afford $211K. In 2011 they averaged $70 million in revenue per day.

Please note that the amount was $211 million

About 3 days of revenue... Not bad!

For context, more Olympic logos.

My favorites are Grenoble, 1968 and Nagano, 1998 and Cortina d’Ampezzo, 1956.

http://www.digitalhorticulture.com/a-history-of-olympic-logo...

I have to say that apart from the current London logo, these are all amazing! They each capture the mood and place of the games at that time... I can't believe that so many countries got their logos so consistently right for one event!

One dud amongst many is remarkable...

Some of these examples are redesigns so it makes the actual cost extremely difficult, or impossible to quantify.

Incidentally PepsiCo released an interesting PDF document which revealed their redesign "process."

http://bunnitude.com/misc/files/pepsi_gravitational_field.pd...

FWIW: http://www.50dollarlogo.com/

Don't use this website. It's a scam.

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/50dollarlogocom-c1... http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080324152924AA...

Plus my own experience.

If you want to pay $50 for a logo, google "Stock logos". If you want an actual good logo, 99 designs has a logo section (they start at like $300).

The conclusion I draw from this list: boring companies spend money on rebranding efforts to change their image; good companies give meaning and value to their logos by themselves.

Just spent $600 on a logo at 99 designs.com. I ended up receiving over 300 submissions. No rebranding necessary seems like $500-1000 is a good price for a graphic.

it's price anchoring based on the size of the company or how many cash they have - more money more bucks spent on logo and nothing more

The Fat Man with a red shirt and blue pants...

Was interested to learn about Nike actually doing the right thing by their logo designer when they made some money. Which doesn't excuse their manufacturing history.

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