Design and Development – What’s it Worth?
Posted by Jon Lee in Personal, Web Development, tags: logo, London-Olympics, money, web development, web-design 
I saw a couple articles lately discussing the London 2012 Olympics and how poorly managed it is. They spent the equivalent of about $800,000 on designing just the logo. Upon the unveiling, it was met with much disappointment. I mean for a million dollars, I’d expect a logo to completely sweep me off my feet. Instead… Londoners were presented with this jagged purple and yellow logo (that some people say look suspiciously like an unmentionable activity).
Is it worth $800,000?
Now I’m sure not all of that money went towards the logo design. I’m sure some of it went towards market research because this new logo is supposed to “appeal to young people�. But honestly, that could be 10 or 20 people’s annual salary. At this rate it’s no wonder they’re estimating to be over budget… by almost 14 billion dollars!
Can it be done for cheaper?
Yes! A lot of BBC readers sent in their own logos. Some of them were jokes, some were quite uncreative, but some were actually really good! The winning logo as voted by readers was created by a Richard Vosey and his brother. Richard is a graphics designer and they said they came up with the idea in 20 minutes  a brilliant idea at that! What do you think Richard charges for a logo design? Definitely not $400,000.
How much is Web Design and Development worth?
So after reading this story about the London Olympics, it got me thinkng how much is web design and web development worth? There are companies out there that charge anywhere from $10,000 to $1,000,000 for designing a website. I could perhaps understand these costs years ago when making a web page required a degree in Computer Science. But with the ease of website creation these days I just can’t see any website being worth that much money!
Not to mention the current Web 2.0 trend favors clean and uncluttered layouts with a sleeky and glossy look. So technically it should be easier than ever to create a good looking website!
Website development on the other hand seems to be easier to justify a high cost. If a client is looking for a custom backend or looking to create the next Google Docs then by all means, shell out half a million for an application that could flip for hundreds of times that.
I don’t know, I’m just ranting but what do you all think? Would you pay $100,000 for a very nice web design?
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