A favicon? That’ll be £585 please. • Hacker News Board

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#31

Post by larrik » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:52 PM UTC

jrwoodruff wrote: post #26

axiom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, lets say it didn't take 5 minutes. Lets say it took 3 hours for a designer to make the favicon pixel by pixel, and 1 hour for a developer to upload the favicon to the server (maybe he only has one arm or something, I don't know, bare with me.) That's ~$230/hr. Really, you can't argue that this wasn't crazy expensive. However, when it comes to government waste this is a pretty trivial example.

Well, you forgot the 2 hour meeting to get approval of everyone involved, then the changes needed after the team weighed in, another meeting for final approval (assuming there was only one round of revisions - this is government here) and then actual implementation. You also forgot the time it took the designer to come up with the original concept - you can't just sit down and produce a production-ready favicon witho…

Seriously, the icon design wasn't a foregone conclusion. It could have NOT had the inverted colors. Or just had the I. Or something completely different.

Plus, it wasn't an internal project. It was outsourced. That can cut productivity quite a bit.

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#32

Post by kpeel » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:55 PM UTC

Am I the only one impressed with the speed and (relatively) decent and detailed response by the government in this case?

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#33

Post by Groxx » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:56 PM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #6

bad_user wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the clarification: I can confirm that that the old website development environment was upgraded from one server to two.

How does that have any impact on the cost of a favicon? Unless they were charged per FTP transfer...

I wonder if they were the ones who set the favicon up so it worked on their server.

If that's the case, diving around someone else's code for £585 is pretty cheap.

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#34

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:56 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #30

larrik wrote: post #18

1) They said that the favicon was not quoted from the contracter separately. Clearly the listed price is from some weird government formula. (Although, the original document DOES list it separately) 2) I'll bet something like Google's favicon cost WAY more than that. 3) 600 pounds isn't all that much when consulting work hourly rates are compared against it, and is practically nothing if they paid an actual designer.…

> 1) They said that the favicon was not quoted from the contractor separately. Clearly the listed price is from some weird government formula. (Although, the original document DOES list it separately) Exactly. The government paid for a website maintenance contract. This was some of the maintenance done. They probably divided the maintenance done by the fee paid to arrive at the figure quoted. This doesn't account for…

[deleted]

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#35

Post by rwhitman » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:56 PM UTC

The fact that they were ready to supply an honest answer to the inquiry is pretty cool. Regardless of how steep the cost of that favicon was, I'm impressed by how they can be held accountable for it

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#36

Post by singular » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:57 PM UTC

I spent a long time trying to get mine right, and it's still looks a bit shabby in my mind - http://www.codegrunt.co.uk/ - I'm not actually that surprised by the cost.

This seems to me to be classic non-tech manager thinking - 'how on earth can a 16x16 icon cost that much?!' - but once you factor in all the various factors it's not so obvious. Just because the instinctive reaction is 'that's ridiculous!' it doesn't mean that should override an actual analysis of what might actually be involved.

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#37

Post by gsk » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:59 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #18

1) They said that the favicon was not quoted from the contracter separately. Clearly the listed price is from some weird government formula. (Although, the original document DOES list it separately) 2) I'll bet something like Google's favicon cost WAY more than that. 3) 600 pounds isn't all that much when consulting work hourly rates are compared against it, and is practically nothing if they paid an actual designer.…

You know, when you split it like that, it almost sounds plausible.

So, I looked closely at the PDF:- -"Web development work (Logo and fonts £2,317.50, Favicon £585, E-newsletter £1,080)"

Creating a favicon costs a quarter of logo and fonts? That is literally unbelievable.

Your reasoning has merits but I think they (the web design company + those who commissioned them) do not merit it.

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#38

Post by Neputys » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:59 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #18

1) They said that the favicon was not quoted from the contracter separately. Clearly the listed price is from some weird government formula. (Although, the original document DOES list it separately) 2) I'll bet something like Google's favicon cost WAY more than that. 3) 600 pounds isn't all that much when consulting work hourly rates are compared against it, and is practically nothing if they paid an actual designer.…

Let's do it this way - if I'll make you 50 pixel perfect fav icons in a day you pay me £100 for each one. OK? (It's a huge discount...)

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#39

Post by rwhitman » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:00 PM UTC

spxdcz wrote: post #20

larrik wrote: post #18

1) They said that the favicon was not quoted from the contracter separately. Clearly the listed price is from some weird government formula. (Although, the original document DOES list it separately) 2) I'll bet something like Google's favicon cost WAY more than that. 3) 600 pounds isn't all that much when consulting work hourly rates are compared against it, and is practically nothing if they paid an actual designer.…

True, but this DOES look like a five minute project. I just screen-grabbed their large logo, put it into Photoshop, reversed the colors and reduced it to 16x16, and it looks almost exactly the same as their icon - no pixel-pushing required. Sure, the colors aren't perfect, but any semi-decent graphic designer could produce that favicon (from the original logo) in 10 minutes maximum. It's not a complicated face, or an…

Agreed, its not like the designer was doing some sort of high-detail pixel art or anything. Favicons can take a really long time. They are an art.

However, this one is not even that good of a job. Its a little off center, the font isn't very clear, hard to read. Clearly just a photoshop resize job. I would expect much cleaner work for that price

Re: A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

#40

Post by derleth » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:05 PM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #16

£1 for the new favicon, £584 for knowing how to do it.

£1 for the new favicon, £1 for knowing how to do it, £583 for knowing my client will actually pay that much.