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

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

#41

Post by kirbman89 » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:10 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.…

Working for the government, I've seen some fleecing in my day. If contractors bid on a job, they have no problem charging 5X, 10X, or more than what they would in the private sector. Sometimes, it's the government agency that is to blame. Some decision makers will not bid out the contract, but will only give it to a select contractor (no-bid contract). I always assume that these decisions were influenced by bribes or money under the table...something!

Case in point. Accenture bid on a fairly complex web application for tracking "containers" that get transferred to private companies, but ofen the "containers" aren't returned back to the agency. Knowing they were the only contractor bidding on this project, Accenture's bid for this web app was over $5 or $6 million! Last I heard the project was still going through. It's sickening to think about it. That's a lot of money for a small, somewhat complex solution. Any advanced enterprise Java developer could do this project by themself within a year's time for 3%. It's a shame, I say!

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

#42

Post by csomar » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:15 PM UTC

If it's for the creation of a new favicon, so that's actually low. Let say, 3 designer hold a discussion together to exchange ideas and mock-ups. They'll need to know what the website is about, what is its' logo, what should the favicon include... If it takes 3 hours, that's 3 x 3 = 9.

Then a designer will need to draw the real favicon from that mock-up, don't forget that he'll need to make many resolutions and then tests them. Let say that take 2 hours, including a final discussion with the other members of the team.

So in total we have 11 hours, if you consider $150/hour a good rate for a professional, then you'll have $1,650.

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

#43

Post by ry0ohki » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:15 PM UTC

andylei wrote: post #25

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.…

arguably, the FOIA request cost the government as much money as the favicon, since these employees would have had to dig through old records to gather the information, as well as respond to the emails

I can vouch for this as a former government worker. While FOIA is vital for transparency in government, there is usually quite a lot of man hours put into fulfilling these requests.

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

#44

Post by lwhi » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:19 PM UTC

My guess is that someone who isn't knowledgeable about web development drew up this list of costs.

Perhaps they transposed a list of requirements / features and assigned the breakdown incorrectly - assigning too much cost/time emphasis to favicon design.

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

#45

Post by rriepe » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:33 PM UTC

If you factor in the time for bothersome, inane e-mails, then their 585 figure makes more sense.

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

#46

Post by mc32 » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:41 PM UTC

rwhitman wrote: post #39

spxdcz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it possible the £585 is a standard fee regardless of simplicity or complexity? i.e. oil change, $40. (no matter it's an easy access filter or complicated filter change)

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

#47

Post by noginn » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:43 PM UTC

"the work needed to put the favicon live was complicated by an old environment (which has since been updated) that caused issues and extended the time taken to carry out the work."

Sounds like their old CMS system made it difficult to actually add a favicon in the template. I very much doubt the quoted price is just for creating the icon.

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

#48

Post by ahi » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:50 PM UTC

singular wrote: post #36

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 m…

Your favicon is far more complicated than theirs is: http://www.ico.gov.uk/favicon.ico

That's a 10 minute job.

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

#49

Post by JonnieCache » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:58 PM UTC

This is why the UK is so broke. Corrupt government procurement procedures. Departments overpay like this for various reasons, having to spend the whole budget is a good one. The UK is very corrupt, but our establishment is very good at hiding it and making it all legitimate. Look up some data about Private Finance Initiatives if you want to be really shocked, a £550 favicon is nothing compared to the billions that have been taken from us. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/24/pfi-nhs

In many of these cases, the procurement procedure is ITSELF contracted out to a third company that will charge a "procurement fee" as a percentage of the value of the final contract. Obviously this incentivises them to pick the most expensive supplier.

I'm trying to find a source but coming up short, google gives me pages and pages of worthless drek from the government websites themselves. I'll try to edit in a link later.

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

#50

Post by Tichy » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 7:03 PM UTC

ahi wrote: post #48

singular wrote: post #36

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 m…

Your favicon is far more complicated than theirs is: http://www.ico.gov.uk/favicon.ico That's a 10 minute job.

Wow, that icon sucks