Logo Design Files Part 1

Your Logo Design is the most important graphic element in which you will invest for your business. You should own the logo in many file formats. Having a library of logo files will enable you to send vendors the types of files they need (for example, other designers, printers, or other service providers).

There are two major categories that I will cover in this article—color variations and file-type variations.

Color Variations

You should receive your logo graphic from your designer in all of the file types listed below in the "File Formats" section (unless otherwise noted) in the following color variations:

Pantone color or CMYK color

Pantone color (if applicable) — If you intend to have your business cards or other materials printed professionally, choosing Pantone colors makes the process less expensive than printing in full four- (or CMYK-) color, unless you choose to use the new printers available today. See my article on inexpensive printing options, coming soon!. Full CMYK color — This is for four-color printing, full color ads, and for use on any materials that you intend to print from your own desktop color printer, i.e, invoices, statements, receipts, letters, etc.

RGB color

RGB color—For use on your website or in your email. You should get JPEG and GIF formats in this color scheme.

Grayscale and/or black and white versions

Grayscale — If your logo contains more than one color, or if it has tones or shades of one color, you should receive a grayscale version. You would use this when your logo is included in the newspaper or in the Yellow Pages, or on any black and white laser-printed materials you may create.

Black and white — This version would be used to produce the best-quality Logo Design on faxes or any materials you reproduce using a copier.

Depending on the design of the logo, sometimes only either a black and white or grayscale version of the logo will be applicable. For example, for a logo with just one color in it, only a black and white version would apply. And, if elements of different colors overlap, a grayscale version will ensure that the different graphic elements do not bleed together, as they would if they were all converted to black. So you may not receive both grayscale and black and white versions, but having one or the other should suffice. File Formats:

Original graphic — The original Illustrator, Photoshop, or other program-native document. This comes in handy if you make a minor change to your company (i.e., if you add LLC or Inc.), or if you decide to change your color scheme.

To make these types of changes easiest, you need a file of the logo in the original program in which it was created. If the logo was created in Illustrator (which is preferable, because creating vector graphics in Illustrator will allow your logo to be scaled up and down as needed), the type should not be outlined, unless your designer has done so in order to modify the typeface.

If the logo was created with Photoshop Brushes, the layers of the document should not be flattened, and the type should not be rasterized (converted from editable type into pixels)—this will ensure that it will still be editable.