Auckland Sets Sail into the Abstract

In and around Auckland, New Zealand there is a lot of controversy surrounding not only the Auckland City Council logo, but also other ratepayer-owned organizations such as Metrowater and the Auckland Regional Council. Criticism of the cost of the logos has been very central to the argument. The Auckland City Council logo was originally announced to have cost NZ$25,000/US$18,840 (which may have been accurate for the cost of the logo development alone) which then inflated to NZ$1 million/US$753,600 (which included market research, staff hours, consultant fees and some signage applications). The cost of the Metrowater logo was noted at NZ$20,000/US$15,072 — without implementation fees (in their defense they claim that the savings on printing in two colors rather than four will easily co