How did facebook applications get started?

How much would it cost to get 50 to 100 small but distinctive icons designed for use in Facebook applications?

• Think something like Facebook gifts.

• Answer:

  The short answer is that you're probably looking at around $3,000-5,000 for a set of 50 icons. 50-100 is a big range so I would focus on estimating 50 icons and you can scale the estimate from there. I'm just guessing at that price, however, since I don't know all the details of the project. That would be something the designer would help you work through in order to provide a precise estimate. I should point out that you will likely get answers that fall into two groups, roughly speaking. Well-known, premium icon designers who make their living, or a significant portion of it designing icons, are going to be pretty expensive for a custom set of 50 icons. But you will undoubtedly find plenty of designers who disagree completely with my answer and my price estimate. I have no doubt you can find someone who would do the project for a couple of hundred to a few hundred dollars. There are a number of factors that will determine the price for designing a custom icon set. Personally, I would estimate this as a time-and-materials project. Designing 50-100 icons is a significant amount of work so the price will be a direct reflection of the amount of work involved. The project would involve 3 primary phases with smaller steps in each phase. The first phase would involve exploring style options to determine the overall style/theme of the icons. You would certainly want the icons to look like a unified set. This phase would probably take between 3-5 days (24-40 hours). The second phase would be to do sketches for each of the individual icons once it is determined which icons/metaphors are needed. This phase will probably take about 1-2 weeks (40-80 hours) for 50-100 icons. This phase will involve a lot of discussions and refinement of the symbols. The designer should get you as involved as possible in this phase of the project so you have input into the design of each icon. This is just to make sure you and the designer are on the same page and so adjustments can be made as needed and when it's easier to make changes. The third phase would be the creation of individual icons. It's more difficult to estimate this phase because how long each icon takes depends on whether or not the icons are color icons or black and white symbols. The final format (vector or raster) will also be a factor. I would also keep in mind that the icons probably need to work for a desktop browser and mobile browser environment so the designer will need to test for both formats. If you average the time required for the steps I outlined above across all icons, each icon will probably take an average of about 4 hours. At standard freelance rates you're looking at a price of at least a few thousand dollars for a custom icon set consisting of 50 icons. 100 icons wouldn't necessarily be double the price since the first phase would require the same amount of time no matter how many icons the set includes.