The honest answer to that is, "I don't know."

The best answer may be, "As much as you can imagine spending on it."

No one can tell you how much an organization should pay for their logo. You need to determine a budget. Consider all the things you'll put it on over the life of the logo. Think about all the money that you're going to spend on marketing, sales, and advertising. Think about the number of times your customers will see it. Know that, if it's designed well it has the power to cement your brand firmly in your customer's mind. Also keep in mind that if it's poorly designed you could potentially be throwing all that money away, or worse yet, giving it to your competition.

Try to assign a value to that.

Every once in a while we hear about astronomical fees paid to gigantic or famous design studios like Landor, Pentagram, C&G Partners, Lippincott, or Wolff Olins for logo design for huge businesses, and people bristle about the humongous amounts of money being spent.

The people cry out, "$50,000 for a logo!?!? That's insane!"

"$200,000 for a logo?!?! That's absurd!"

"$1,000,000 for a logo?!?! That's vulgar!"

Well, not when you consider the amount of money that's at stake for those businesses.

Imagine for a moment that your business is going to spend $1,500,000,000 on advertising this year. That's $1.5 Billion. With a B. According to Warc.com, that's what Procter & Gamble, marketers of all of these brands, have spent so far this year on advertisingin the US alone. So, when they decided to redesign one of their major retail brands, Olay, as they did this past year, they needed to take it seriously. There's a lot of money at stake.

If they don't, they're risking not only wasting the money they spend on ads, but the money they hope those ads will return in sales. They're also risking losing customers they already had through confusion and competition.

If you factor in POP displays, packaging, sales materials, in addition to TV and Print advertising, you're talking about millions if not billions of possible impressions that they could be wasting if their logo isn't effective at burrowing into the public's consciousness.

I know your business isn't thinking of spending $1.5 Billion on marketing this year. If you were, you wouldn't be getting your branding advice from me. You'd be talking to one of those firms I listed above. But, when you're considering designing the identity for your business, you need to think about the same math as Mr. or Ms. Billion-Dollar-Budget. 

What are you going to put your logo on?

• Business Cards?
• Stationery?
• Invoices?
• Trade Dress (uniforms)?
• Menus?
• Delivery or Service Vehicles?
• Your Website?
• Shipping Labels?
• Sales Materials?
• Educational Materials?
• TV ads?
• Print Ads?
• Outdoor Advertising?
• Your Product?

How much are you going to spend on all that stuff? There's potential in every one of the things you put that logo on to impress your brand into the user's brain.

How much of that money and potential are you willing to waste?

None, right?

Me either.