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Activities that can’t be billed to other agencies are another drain. One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue squa

Activities that can’t be billed to other agencies are another drain. One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. for anyone else curious: (new) Black Logo: https://18f.gsa.gov/assets/img/logos/18f-logo.svg https://18f.gsa.gov/assets/img/logos/18f-logo.svg (old) Blue Logo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/18F_logo.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/18F_logo...

justinsaccount 10y ago
The new logo looks like something you would come up with if you needed a placeholder image for the real logo.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  For the US Federal Government, it's fairly revolutionary.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Other governments spend less and get more impressive results http://www.schleswig-holstein.de/SiteGlobals/StyleBundles/Bilder/SH/logo.png;jsessionid=E7FDA59D9ACECC0691ECD0D83AB6E120?__blob=normal&v=1 http://www.schleswig-holstein.de/SiteGlobals/StyleBundles/Bi...
losteric 10y ago
They should have just updated the old logo with the new font
chrissnell 10y ago
That's almost unbelievable. This is completely absurd, on par with the mythical $800 government toilet seat, except that this cost us taxpayers far more. I'm completely disgusted. This is textbook fraud, waste, and abuse. By the way, like a friend suddenly shaving off all of their hair, I consider a corporate logo change to be a harbinger of bad things to come.
- metaphor 10y ago
  > ...on par with the mythical $800 government toilet seat, except that this cost us taxpayers far more. Sorry to burst your disposable consumer-centric bubble, but not all toilet seat applications are optimized for profitability at economies of scale.[1][2] [1] http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3134/3086233389_568cac502b_z.jpg http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3134/3086233389_568cac502b_z.j... [2] http://pics-about-space.com/space-shuttle-toilet-seat?p=1 http://pics-about-space.com/space-shuttle-toilet-seat?p=1
guessmyname 10y ago
This reminds me a time when I used to work closely with a design team in a web agency, it was very frustrating to work with them because every little modification to things like colors, sizes, buttons and the like would be accompanied with several hours of "design strategy", time that the designers would waste thinking and prototyping new ideas for the corporate image of any of our clients, I say "waste" because most of the time they would end up with a design similar if not equal to the original. Their GitHub organization [1] shows significant activity, it is sad to see people spending their time, energy and resources on things that are ultimately not supported by their financial funds. [1] https://github.com/18f https://github.com/18f
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  It took a couple of experiences dealing with serious, fancy pants designers to convince me that most of them are charlatans. Even something as simple as widening a button was stonewalled by "explorations", "design strategy meetings", "pattern library meetings", etc. The end result was getting even a single component mocked up took at least a week and was no better than what I could have come up with in 30 minutes.
  - agravier 10y ago
    Not charlatans, but professional bikeshed painters :)
  - johansch 10y ago
    Quite a few UX/design people who have actually gone through education/training (as opposed to learning by doing) seem to suffer by an extreme form of process overload. It makes sense I guess. It's really easy to teach processes and it probably makes the them feel "professional".
    - yoz-y 10y ago
      In many cases this applies to software engineering as well.
    - 10y ago
jacobsenscott 10y ago
Meh. I'm sure google spent millions on their logo change, and it was just a font tweak. Hackernews was gushing. God knows what they spend per week on google doodles. There's no winning here for 18f. Either their sites are archaic disasters and they are criticized for not being up to par with the top tier consumer sites. Or they spend some money to bring them up to par and its "OMG! An $800 toilet seat!"
- debaserab2 10y ago
  The difference being, of course, that Google is a massively profitable company that can afford that kind of expense.
  - metaphor 10y ago
    And how long did that take?[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-success-really-takes-2011-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-succ...
    - debaserab2 10y ago
      Google wasn't going through giant rebranding exercising before they were massively profitable.
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  I want government sites and buildings to look like archaic disasters, because it at least implies that my tax dollars aren't being pissed away on frivolous opulence. Google can spend ten billion dollars changing their logo because they're profitable and they answer to their board & shareholders. I don't remember anyone asking me if I wanted to contribute money to a government tech startup.
  - setpatchaddress 10y ago
    Do tell. What do you think about paying the salary of FBI agents who interfere in presidential elections?
Yhippa 10y ago
There's probably a legitimate story behind this right? This sounds like the randomizer IBM made for the TSA where the cost was shocking but was explained away by overhead or typical government costs.
spectrum1234 10y ago
Assuming $125,000/employee and 2000 hours/year that logo cost $45437.50.
- metaphor 10y ago
  That's GS-14/15 compensation based on DC locality[1]...doubt it. Government hourly equivalent is also based on a 2087-hr divisor.[2][3] [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/16Tables/html/DCB.aspx https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... [2] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/computing-hourly-rates-of-pay-using-the-2087-hour-divisor/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi... [3] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/116278.pdf https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...
- acdha 10y ago
  The standard rule is to double the rate for staff to account for overhead - healthcare, retirement, paid leave, etc. If they're paying a GS-15 staffer $125k I'd be surprised if the effective net cost is significantly less than $250/hour – and that's probably a big win compared to a contractor charging you $250 for someone making $90k.
- whywhywhywhy 10y ago
  re-branding != a logo. This is like whinging that an entire e-commerce system was just the compiled index.html
brownbat 10y ago
Reminds me of the million dollar Pepsi logo change, which basically tilted the old design a few degrees. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesign-document-1-million-for-this/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesign...
morgante 10y ago
And I thought 18F was supposed to be an example of government becoming more efficient. This has to be a joke.
rndmize 10y ago
From the actual report - "18F Branding – Staff spent 727 hours (valued at an estimated $140,104) developing the 18F brand. An example of one of their branding projects is the 18F logo change, seen below in Figure 8." Pretty poor journalism. Brand development strikes me as a much bigger category than a single logo change.
- e12e 10y ago
  Indeed, I remember a few posts/comments by 18f people here on hn - surely those hours taken were "spent developing the 18f brand". Of course, those people might have been doing that work for free, in their spare time.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- morgante 10y ago
  Wow that's incredibly terrible reporting. Designing a logo is a subset of branding, and a small subset at that. 727 hours on branding in a year for an organization of 200 is quite reasonable.
lucideer 10y ago
This is almost certainly off-topic, but am I the only one on HN who much prefers the newer logo?
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  It's a much better logo. From an aesthetic perspective the old one looked like a sign from Studio 54. It was a late-70s throwback font: cool looking, but not really the right connotation for a tech team that is supposed to be dragging the government into the present. The new font and alignment is more neutral and graphical. From a practical perspective, the new logo retains its legibility better at small sizes on screens, compared to the old logo's smaller thinner font. And making the new logo black and white reduces variants and therefore reduces cost. It's the same logo file whether you're printing 1-color, 2-color, or full-color.
vkou 10y ago
I heard from a few former employees that back in the '00s, a few years before their bankruptcy, Kodak spent close to a million dollars on redesigning their logo. They changed a font. 727 employee hours, in comparison, seems like a pretty sweet deal. Not to mention that the logo change was only part of that 727 hours (But out of context, it sure makes for an awesome soundbite!)

justinsaccount 10y ago

The new logo looks like something you would come up with if you needed a placeholder image for the real logo.

wavefunction 10y ago
For the US Federal Government, it's fairly revolutionary.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Other governments spend less and get more impressive results http://www.schleswig-holstein.de/SiteGlobals/StyleBundles/Bilder/SH/logo.png;jsessionid=E7FDA59D9ACECC0691ECD0D83AB6E120?__blob=normal&v=1 http://www.schleswig-holstein.de/SiteGlobals/StyleBundles/Bi...

losteric 10y ago

They should have just updated the old logo with the new font

chrissnell 10y ago

That's almost unbelievable. This is completely absurd, on par with the mythical $800 government toilet seat, except that this cost us taxpayers far more. I'm completely disgusted. This is textbook fraud, waste, and abuse. By the way, like a friend suddenly shaving off all of their hair, I consider a corporate logo change to be a harbinger of bad things to come.

metaphor 10y ago
> ...on par with the mythical $800 government toilet seat, except that this cost us taxpayers far more. Sorry to burst your disposable consumer-centric bubble, but not all toilet seat applications are optimized for profitability at economies of scale.[1][2] [1] http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3134/3086233389_568cac502b_z.jpg http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3134/3086233389_568cac502b_z.j... [2] http://pics-about-space.com/space-shuttle-toilet-seat?p=1 http://pics-about-space.com/space-shuttle-toilet-seat?p=1

guessmyname 10y ago

This reminds me a time when I used to work closely with a design team in a web agency, it was very frustrating to work with them because every little modification to things like colors, sizes, buttons and the like would be accompanied with several hours of "design strategy", time that the designers would waste thinking and prototyping new ideas for the corporate image of any of our clients, I say "waste" because most of the time they would end up with a design similar if not equal to the original. Their GitHub organization [1] shows significant activity, it is sad to see people spending their time, energy and resources on things that are ultimately not supported by their financial funds. [1] https://github.com/18f https://github.com/18f

cloakandswagger 10y ago
It took a couple of experiences dealing with serious, fancy pants designers to convince me that most of them are charlatans. Even something as simple as widening a button was stonewalled by "explorations", "design strategy meetings", "pattern library meetings", etc. The end result was getting even a single component mocked up took at least a week and was no better than what I could have come up with in 30 minutes.
- agravier 10y ago
  Not charlatans, but professional bikeshed painters :)
- johansch 10y ago
  Quite a few UX/design people who have actually gone through education/training (as opposed to learning by doing) seem to suffer by an extreme form of process overload. It makes sense I guess. It's really easy to teach processes and it probably makes the them feel "professional".
  - yoz-y 10y ago
    In many cases this applies to software engineering as well.
  - 10y ago

jacobsenscott 10y ago

Meh. I'm sure google spent millions on their logo change, and it was just a font tweak. Hackernews was gushing. God knows what they spend per week on google doodles. There's no winning here for 18f. Either their sites are archaic disasters and they are criticized for not being up to par with the top tier consumer sites. Or they spend some money to bring them up to par and its "OMG! An $800 toilet seat!"

debaserab2 10y ago
The difference being, of course, that Google is a massively profitable company that can afford that kind of expense.
- metaphor 10y ago
  And how long did that take?[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-success-really-takes-2011-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-succ...
  - debaserab2 10y ago
    Google wasn't going through giant rebranding exercising before they were massively profitable.
cloakandswagger 10y ago
I want government sites and buildings to look like archaic disasters, because it at least implies that my tax dollars aren't being pissed away on frivolous opulence. Google can spend ten billion dollars changing their logo because they're profitable and they answer to their board & shareholders. I don't remember anyone asking me if I wanted to contribute money to a government tech startup.
- setpatchaddress 10y ago
  Do tell. What do you think about paying the salary of FBI agents who interfere in presidential elections?

Yhippa 10y ago

There's probably a legitimate story behind this right? This sounds like the randomizer IBM made for the TSA where the cost was shocking but was explained away by overhead or typical government costs.

spectrum1234 10y ago

Assuming $125,000/employee and 2000 hours/year that logo cost $45437.50.

metaphor 10y ago
That's GS-14/15 compensation based on DC locality[1]...doubt it. Government hourly equivalent is also based on a 2087-hr divisor.[2][3] [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/16Tables/html/DCB.aspx https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... [2] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/computing-hourly-rates-of-pay-using-the-2087-hour-divisor/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi... [3] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/116278.pdf https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...
acdha 10y ago
The standard rule is to double the rate for staff to account for overhead - healthcare, retirement, paid leave, etc. If they're paying a GS-15 staffer $125k I'd be surprised if the effective net cost is significantly less than $250/hour – and that's probably a big win compared to a contractor charging you $250 for someone making $90k.
whywhywhywhy 10y ago
re-branding != a logo. This is like whinging that an entire e-commerce system was just the compiled index.html

brownbat 10y ago

Reminds me of the million dollar Pepsi logo change, which basically tilted the old design a few degrees. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesign-document-1-million-for-this/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesign...

morgante 10y ago

And I thought 18F was supposed to be an example of government becoming more efficient. This has to be a joke.

rndmize 10y ago

From the actual report - "18F Branding – Staff spent 727 hours (valued at an estimated $140,104) developing the 18F brand. An example of one of their branding projects is the 18F logo change, seen below in Figure 8." Pretty poor journalism. Brand development strikes me as a much bigger category than a single logo change.

e12e 10y ago
Indeed, I remember a few posts/comments by 18f people here on hn - surely those hours taken were "spent developing the 18f brand". Of course, those people might have been doing that work for free, in their spare time.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
morgante 10y ago
Wow that's incredibly terrible reporting. Designing a logo is a subset of branding, and a small subset at that. 727 hours on branding in a year for an organization of 200 is quite reasonable.

lucideer 10y ago

This is almost certainly off-topic, but am I the only one on HN who much prefers the newer logo?

snowwrestler 10y ago
It's a much better logo. From an aesthetic perspective the old one looked like a sign from Studio 54. It was a late-70s throwback font: cool looking, but not really the right connotation for a tech team that is supposed to be dragging the government into the present. The new font and alignment is more neutral and graphical. From a practical perspective, the new logo retains its legibility better at small sizes on screens, compared to the old logo's smaller thinner font. And making the new logo black and white reduces variants and therefore reduces cost. It's the same logo file whether you're printing 1-color, 2-color, or full-color.

vkou 10y ago

I heard from a few former employees that back in the '00s, a few years before their bankruptcy, Kodak spent close to a million dollars on redesigning their logo. They changed a font. 727 employee hours, in comparison, seems like a pretty sweet deal. Not to mention that the logo change was only part of that 727 hours (But out of context, it sure makes for an awesome soundbite!)