How much to spend on logo design?

How much did you spend on your logo? Here are a few pointers:

Nike £22

Twitter £10

BP £4.5m

NHS £12K

BBC 3 £400K

Compassion in World Farming £5.5K

Perplexing eh? How much should you spend?

The mind boggles at how BP managed to spend so much, while Twitter spent so little. The moral is that there is no such thing as a ‘right’ amount. You spend what is appropriate.

So BP have a huge number of stakeholders to consider, and it was vital that they got it right – they couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

While Twitter was essentially a start up and i-stock had the answer in the shape of a really naff looking little bird. Lucky them!

My advice is to consider the different stakeholders:

• Employees – it’s their future that’s at stake;
• Shareholders – it’s their company and financial return;
• Customers – they need to feel they are engaging with a serious contender for their money;
• Competitors and the market – you need to send a message to the market about your position, your vision and ambitions.

Not that having read this you’re any the wiser about how seriously you should take it, but you can see that it’s more than just a dry formula.

Perhaps the only rule is: the more important it is to you and your stakeholders, the more you should expect to spend on it.