Every time the news flashes "the company spent 100 million on a logo redesign", a storm rages in social media. A notional commentator, Peter, with an avatar of a power engineer, goes on the attack: "I can do that for you in Photoshop in half an hour!" And Vasya probably will, but only a logo. But something that corporations pay millions for is a completely different operation.
Google's logo change in May 2025. Illustration: gagadget
Because in the world of big brands, a logo is just the tip of the iceberg. Under the water, there is strategy, research, thousands of people, legal fees, changed interfaces, redesigned offices, re-painted signs, updated packaging, and years of preparation to ensure that the conventional "smiling Amazon" does not look like something alien to everything the company lives for.
Amazon logo change in May 2025. Illustration: gagadget
A brand is not a picture. It is a reputation in numbers
Let's try to break it down. Decade update: Google has changed its logo - in a technical sense, it was really a "free" redesign, because it was done internally. But here's the scale: update the interface on mail, maps, Android, YouTube, Chrome, and dozens of other services, plus all offices, presentations, walls, badges, videos, advertising... All this is part of the new identity. And it costs millions.
Amazon went even further. In 18 months, in collaboration with the Koto agency, the company has updated not only its "smile" but also the visual language for 50 sub-brands in 15 countries. With new fonts, palettes, iconography and even logos on trucks and in Formula 1 races. And yes, that's millions too. And yes, it also made sense - because the Amazon brand had been torn apart by rapid growth and needed to be put back together.
Where does this cosmic sum come from?
It's simple: a brand is not just a logo. It is:
- Strategy and research - dozens of interviews, opinion polls, competitor analysis, global audits. For giants, this is $500,000 to $3,000,000.
- Creativity and identity - from $100,000 to $500,000 for a design system, fonts, guidelines. Sometimes it is more.
- Implementation - updating websites, apps, advertising, packaging, cars, clothing, signage. This can cost $10,000,000 or more.
- Legal costs - registration of trademarks, legal support - are another few hundred thousand.
- Launch - PR, advertising, events. If you don't explain the brand, no one will understand it.
Is it justified?
If done wisely, yes. In a world where 90% of a company's value is intangible assets (i.e. brand, trust, loyalty, associations), investing in reputation is a strategic game. A good brand sells for more, hires people more easily, and has higher multiples. It even survives crises better.
Poorly done rebranding is another story. Gap spent $100 million to withdraw its logo in a week after users' anger.
Pepsi updated its identity for a billion (!), which was later criticised in the professional community. And sales for the first 9 months of 2008 fell by 6.6 per cent. So the main issue is not the price, but the adequacy.
Bottom line.
A logo redesign is always a cause for memes. But in reality, it's much more than that: it's a change in the company's positioning, philosophy, appearance, and voice. And if you think that "it's expensive", remember how much the loss of trust costs. And think about what the world would look like if Google still had its childish, teenage font from the 2000s.
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Co-founder and editor-in-chief of gagadget.com. Graduated from the Journalism Department of Kyiv National University in 1998. I made my first publications in mass media in my school years (there were still newspapers then). Observed the evolution of smartphones in the front row since Nokia 7650 on Symbian. Since 2002 he has specialized in the topic of smartphones, mobile communications and analysis of the development of the consumer electronics market.
