How to charge $1M for a logo...



Is this seriously what Pepsi was handed and they though, ya that sounds good.

That was hard to even skim.
 
You laugh but corporate identity is serious business, especially serious if you are an established brand looking to change your identity.

It's hard for folks who normally pay $30 (or less) for a logo to accept, and a lot of it is bullshit; but when done really well, it's worth every penny to a company like Pepsi Co. What's a million dollars when you are talking about your public perception and potential impact on your sales?

You can also be sure that a whole lot more went into this than just this 27 page document. There would be focus groups and test runs of the product. Split testing and everything else you can imagine that could be done to gauge public acceptance.

It's funny though, twice now I've been engaged with high street agencies from the UK to design branding for gaming companies. The owners of these companies felt like they needed the clout of an agency that had previously designed the likes of the British Airways or Virgin logos.

The first logo was going to be £54k. £17k deposit just to have them sit down and talk about it. We sat with them and brainstormed and they went off and came back with their concepts... which no one liked. I ended up creating the brand myself in house.

The second time was going to be mid £30k range and in the end after all their futzing about with staff interviews and public focus groups and bullshit like that, the three concepts were rejected and once again we created the logo in house. This time it was a concept from another designer working with me which we collaborated on to produce finished art.

Never did see any portion of the moneys on offer, and it just goes to show that spending a fortune doesn't always work out.
 
No, I agree with corporate identity, but the reasoning behind the changes sounded like it was pulled out of thin air. Those guys were smoking some good shit when they came up with their reasoning.
 
Wow. I wonder if there was one suit with the balls to call that bullshit out.
The new logo is shit too. What a great move.
 
Here's a few other good expensive logo stories.

£60,000 to rip off a neighboring city logo

Council lavishes £60,000 to copy logo of the council next door | Mail Online

The £400,000 2012 Olympic logo is a favorite

2012 Summer Olympics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A £45,000 logo for Cardiff (there's a fair number of these stories about UK city councils losing the plot on their logo designs)

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | South East Wales | Logo aims to ditch 'stereotype'

Actually, that one is a direct rip on the logo for Greece, which is shit too.

Here's a half a million pounds spent on the new Cornwall logo

Taxpayers fuming as Cornwall council spends £500,000 on new logo likened to boxing promoter Don King's hair | Mail Online

Those are a few off the top of my head, but I can keep this up all day really. If you can get the work more power to you.
 
Oh yeah, and this is probably one of my all time favorites... £14,000 for this logo for the UK Office of Government Commerce.

OGC - Home << looks ok deployed, but when turned on its side...

ogc-logo.jpg
 
step 1.
steal a high school student's astronomy and art textbook. take the kids stash too and smoke da herb.

step 2.
go to the occult bookstore and pick up a book on magickal sigils. build a meth lab and brainstorm while dressed up like jimmy page.

step 3.
doodle over old pepsi logos. draw lines and do a few lines!

step 4.
get really pretentious and compare a me too cola product's branding with mankind's greatest achievements and the universe itself. the client sure could use a grade 10 art lesson!

step 5.
go to smileycentral, download and draw inspiration. next gen 3d similes bitch! fuck around in adobe illustrator.

step 6.
MONIES.
 
Fatbat said:
Oh yeah, and this is probably one of my all time favorites... £14,000 for this logo for the UK Office of Government Commerce.

OGC - Home << looks ok deployed, but when turned on its side...

ogc-logo.jpg
Click to expand...
Good graphic designers tend to be spatially aware people. I refuse to believe the guy that did that was not entirely aware of how it looked on its side.
 
That OGC thing is real old, but real funny. How could you not ever see it on the side before buying it?
 
guysmy said:
step 1.
steal a high school student's astronomy and art textbook. take the kids stash too and smoke da herb.

step 2.
go to the occult bookstore and pick up a book on magickal sigils. build a meth lab and brainstorm while dressed up like jimmy page.

step 3.
doodle over old pepsi logos. draw lines and do a few lines!

step 4.
get really pretentious and compare a me too cola product's branding with mankind's greatest achievements and the universe itself. the client sure could use a grade 10 art lesson!

step 5.
go to smileycentral, download and draw inspiration. next gen 3d similes bitch! fuck around in adobe illustrator.

step 6.
MONIES.
Click to expand...
LMAO...that's great.

@FatBat...I totally realize that a lot of thought and work goes into developing a brand, and I'm often appalled at some of the going rates around here for "logo design". But, you get what you pay for.

I've held a CMO position and occupued multiple executive roles in my career, so I definitely get it. Personally I think its way harder to develop a good brand and create a logo that encapsulates it, than it is to develop and design an entire site.

Regardless, you gotta admit...the bullshit meter on that PDF is at full capacity.
 
lol, this reminds me of tests where you had to write an essay and didn't study much and pulled out so much bs out of your ass that confused the teacher and you ended up with a good mark
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom