RE: Favicons

What is a Favicon ?

A favicon (short for Favorite icon), also known as a shortcut icon, Web site icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, is a file containing one or more small icons, most commonly 16×16 pixels, associated with a particular Web site or Web page.  A web designer can create such an icon and install it into a Web site (or Web page) by several means, and graphical web browsers will then make use of it.  Browsers that provide favicon support typically display a page's favicon in the browser's address bar and next to the page's name in a list of bookmarks.  Browsers that support a tabbed document interface typically show a page's favicon next to the page's title on the tab, and site-specific browsers use the favicon as desktop icon.      -- Wikipedia

What the heck is a favicon, you ask ?  It's a tiny little image that most folks don't ever really notice.  Or do they ?

Favicon Image Here is our favicon to the left.  You can barely see it.  But, it does look better in the place where it is actually supposed to be displayed.

Obviously, the bigger it gets, the better it looks.  That was 16 pixels square in size.  16 x 16.  A pixel is very tiny.  There are 256 of them in that dinky little image.  Let's double the size and double it again, so you can actually see what is going on.

Enlarged Favicon ImageOK.  That's better.  It's the Star Spangled Banner.  It's still pretty small though.  That is the point.  It is supposed to be small.  Do you see it located up in the tab section of the browser that you are on, to the left of the words, "RE: Favicons - Rinehart Enterprises" ?  That is the favicon that we designed for the RE: website pages.

Any website can have a favicon on it's pages.  Hopefully, it is an original design, just for that business, and not a blank square shown in Firefox or a gray earth shown in Chrome -- like we see on a lot of website pages.  If you have developed a Joomla! site, you may have Joomla!'s favicon still up in that spot !

If this favicon is not related to your business, we believe that you have not taken advantage of another branding opportunity for yourself.

Favicon design is very tedious work.  They give us eye strain ( and we use big hi-def monitors when we do our work ).  But there are several graphic design tools in existence that can make this task much easier.

Actually, our Star Spangled Banner favicon is only 16 x 13 in size.  There are 13 stripes in the flag, so that is how high it is, 13 pixels.  We have a transparent row of pixels at the top and two transparent rows at the bottom.  208 pixels in total opaque size located in a 256 pixel space.

Why the USA Flag ?  Well, it has special significance for the founding Principal here at RE:.  His son, Tony, is in the US Air Force.  When Tony's dad sees the flag, he imagines in his mind, his son standing in front of it in his full dress blues.  It is a nice thought to have everyday.  Plus we are patriotic.  The flag is in our website background.  It all ties together with what we are trying to portray on our website.  USA, USA, USA.

Here are some favicons that RE: has designed ( 4 times their actual, website useable size )....

nTier Technologies FaviconYour Blissful Baby FaviconR & M Sports FaviconCaffe Boa Restaurant FaviconSports Journey FaviconTeam Az Sports FaviconOrganization of Tri-Ball Players FaviconVillage & Valley Favicon2Logo64

A website's favicon can be an off shoot of a company's logo design.  Or something completely different.  The backgrounds can be transparent, or not.

So, now that you know what favicons are, you will start paying more attention to them, and come up with some good ideas for one of your own if you don't already have one.  RE: believes that every website page should have it's own favicon attached to it.  And a website isn't stuck with just having one favicon.  Any entity can use several if it wishes.  Let your imagination run wild.  Life should be fun, right ?

      Business Cards

RE: would enjoy assisting with your favicon design project(s). Please contact us with any ideas that you may dream about.