The £45,000 Logo

Cardiff has just spent £45,000 on a new logo. Not only have they ditched the daffodils and dragons (ie. their 'identity'), but they have replaced the logo with a bunch of multicoloured discs.

£45,000 can pay 4 people for a whole year - did it really take that much effort just for the logo?

Another example, the London 2012 Olympic Logo, cost £400,000. You can almost pay 40 salaries with that (albeit in lower paid jobs).

And the cherry on the cake? Nothing in the logo symbolises London - in fact the text will be barely readable on smaller versions.

Why won't people get the basic idea that a logo need not cost loads of money? It just needs an identity, such as the London Underground roundel. The company survives because of it's reputation (and in this case, nobody really gets a choice).

New companies get going, not because of the logo (as such), but because of offers and good service. Abbey, which rebranded twice in an 18 month period, recently got really bad reviews on the consumer programme Watchdog. It proves that money should perhaps be spent on internal processes and customer service, rather than rebranding!

Why do people change an established identity at such huge cost? BT did it when the replaced the piper with the globe. Was it really worth it? The piper cost £50 million in 1991 - an amazing 5000 salaries. Of course much of this was probably spent on repainting vans, but this is still a little concerning when you look at the figures.

One could argue that such costs can be covered by the need to repaint vehicles, a more regular occurance on the railways. ONE Railway, a National Express company, has recently announced that it will rebrand itself, much to the relief of a very linguistically confused public. Most of the costs will be absorbed since trains have to be repainted anyway. Regardless, I think most people will agree that painting all the trains the same colour would probably cost less (with a little logo in the corner, perhaps).

So, next time you feel like investing in a logo, bear in mind how many people you could employ (or not sack) for the cost of something you could put together in house or pay a student to do... The student need not even qualify for the minimum wage, judging by some of the designs we have seen...