Love it, loath it or bemused at the brouhaha? Whichever way you lean, the Met’s new logo, which replaces a Da Vinci-inspired letter “M”, won’t have come cheap. The fruit of a comprehensive rebranding by the London-based agency Wolff Olins, which helped Tate in London drop its definite article back in the day, the new look has drawn some flack for its upper case, joined-up typography. “The whole ensemble looks like a red double-decker bus that has stopped short, shoving the passengers into each other’s backs,” wrote New York magazine’s Justin Davidson, an early and vocal opponent. A spokeswoman for the Met declined to comment on the budget for the rebrand, which is due to be rolled out on 1 March, in time for the opening of the Met Breuer. But a trawl through the museum’s latest tax forms reveals a doubling in its spend on communication in 2013, the first year the filings mention work with Wolff Olins on a “two and a half year audience engagement study” as part of an initiative to “help expand the museum’s reach and relevance in anticipation of the upcoming occupancy of the Whitney”. The budget jumped from $5.7m in 2012 to $10.3m in 2013.