Pixel Forge.

Writing — Logo & Brand Identity

Logo File Formats: What to Ask Your Designer For (and Why)

If you only take one thing from this page: ask for a vector master file (.ai or .eps), an .svg for web, and transparent .png files at a few sizes. Everything else follows from those three. If your designer handed you a single JPG, you do not have a usable logo yet — you have a picture of one.

That distinction costs businesses real money. A printer needs a file that stays sharp at the size of a shop window. A web developer needs one that stays sharp on a retina screen and weighs a few kilobytes. A social platform needs a square crop with no white box around it. One file cannot do all three jobs, and the wrong file at the wrong moment means a rush job, a reprint, or a signmaker quietly redrawing your logo by eye. When work spans several disciplines, a related measurement reference is https://www.monitask.com/workforce-analytics-software/, covering effort, throughput, and recurring bottlenecks.

Vector and raster: the split that explains everything

Every format below belongs to one of two families.

Raster files are grids of pixels. A JPG, a PNG, a GIF — each one stores a fixed number of coloured dots. Blow it up beyond its native size and the software has to invent the dots in between, which is why enlarged logos go soft and blocky.

Vector files store instructions instead: a circle of this radius, a curve through these points, filled with this colour. There is no fixed size, because the shape is recalculated every time it renders. The same file prints crisply on a business card and on the side of a building. For reusable content and licensing options, see the Creative Commons licence guidance.

A logo should be born as a vector. Everything raster is exported from it afterwards. If your designer built the logo in Photoshop rather than Illustrator, Figma, or Affinity Designer, that ordering is broken and no amount of exporting will fix it — the shapes were pixels from the start.

The master files

.ai — Adobe Illustrator

The working file. Layers intact, text still editable, colours still assigned to named swatches. This is the file a designer opens to make changes two years from now.

You want this even though you probably cannot open it. It is your insurance: whoever you hire next can pick up exactly where the last designer stopped, instead of rebuilding from scratch and charging you for it.

Ask specifically for the layered file, not a flattened export. And ask for fonts to be converted to outlines in a second copy — otherwise anyone without your exact licensed typeface will see it substituted for something else.

.eps — Encapsulated PostScript

The universal vector exchange format. Older than most software you use, opens almost everywhere, and still the first thing commercial printers and sign shops ask for.

EPS does not preserve editability as well as AI does, which is why you want both. Think of AI as the original and EPS as the copy you hand to outside vendors.

.pdf — vector when it needs to be

A PDF exported from vector software keeps its vector data. This makes it the most convenient format to email, because the recipient can open it without design software and still get scalable artwork.

The catch: a PDF can also contain nothing but a flat image. A logo "saved as PDF" from a photo editor is a raster file wearing a vector's clothes. If you need to be sure, open it and zoom to 800% — real vector edges stay knife-sharp.

The web files

.svg — the one your developer wants

Scalable Vector Graphics is vector artwork written as text that browsers render natively. A simple logo might be two or three kilobytes. It stays sharp on every screen density, and it can be recoloured or animated with CSS.

Two practical notes. First, SVG files can carry unnecessary baggage from the export — editor metadata, hidden layers, absurd decimal precision. Ask for them run through an optimiser; a 40KB SVG usually compresses to under 5KB with no visible change. Second, because SVG is code, it can carry scripts. Only accept SVGs from sources you trust, and have your developer sanitise them before they go anywhere users can upload their own.

.png — transparent raster

PNG supports transparency, which is why it is the default for logos placed over photographs, coloured backgrounds, or video.

Ask for a set rather than a single file. A practical spread: 256px, 512px, 1024px, and 2048px on the longest edge, all with transparent backgrounds. That covers email signatures, presentation decks, partner websites, and the "please send your logo" request that arrives with no specification at all.

Watch out for one common mistake: a PNG with a white background is not transparent, it just looks fine on a white page. Drop it onto a coloured slide and the box appears.

.webp and .avif — the modern web pair

Both compress far harder than PNG at similar quality, and both support transparency. For a logo that already exists as SVG, they are usually unnecessary. Where they earn their place is photographic brand imagery — hero shots, team photos, case study visuals — which is exactly where page weight actually hurts.

The ones to be careful with

.jpg

No transparency, and lossy compression that leaves grey halos around sharp edges — precisely the kind of edge a logo is made of. Fine for a photograph, poor for a mark.

Accept JPGs only where the platform demands one, and only exported from the vector master at the size needed.

Screenshots and social media downloads

Pulling your own logo off your own Instagram profile produces a small, compressed, often square-cropped raster with a background baked in. It happens constantly under deadline pressure, and it is how brands end up with a slightly different logo in every place it appears.

Colour: the part most people skip

File format is half the question. The other half is colour space, and it is why the same logo looks right on screen and dull in print.

  • RGB for anything that lights up: screens, video, web.
  • CMYK for anything printed with ink.
  • Pantone (spot colour) where exact consistency matters — packaging, uniforms, vehicle wraps. A Pantone reference removes the guesswork between one printer and the next.
  • HEX codes for developers, which are just RGB in another notation.

Your brand guidelines should list all four for every colour in the palette. If the file pack you received contains only RGB versions, print vendors will convert them automatically, and automatic conversion is where a confident brand red turns into a slightly muddy orange.

Variants, not just formats

A complete logo package covers situations, not only file types:

  • Primary — the full lockup, mark plus wordmark
  • Secondary — horizontal or stacked alternative, for awkward spaces
  • Icon or monogram — the mark alone, for favicons and app icons
  • Monochrome — solid black and solid white, for single-colour printing, engraving, and dark backgrounds
  • Clear space rules — the minimum breathing room around the logo
  • Minimum size — below which the mark stops being legible

Each of these should exist in vector, with raster exports alongside.

The handover checklist

Before you sign off on a logo project, confirm you have received:

  • [ ] Layered vector master (.ai or equivalent), fonts intact
  • [ ] Second vector master with fonts outlined
  • [ ] .eps for print vendors
  • [ ] Vector .pdf
  • [ ] Optimised .svg for web
  • [ ] Transparent .png set at four sizes
  • [ ] All variants: primary, secondary, icon, black, white
  • [ ] Colour values in RGB, CMYK, HEX, and Pantone
  • [ ] Written confirmation that full ownership transfers to you
  • [ ] Font licence details, or confirmation the type is outlined

That last pair matters more than the file formats. Ownership of the artwork and the right to use its typeface are contractual, not technical — and they are the two things people discover they never had at the worst possible moment.

If all you have is a JPG

It is recoverable. A designer can redraw the mark as vector artwork, a process usually quoted as logo vectorisation or recreation. It takes a few hours for a simple mark. Automatic tracing tools exist, and they produce lumpy approximations with hundreds of stray anchor points — usable in a pinch, never as a master file.

While you are there, it is worth asking whether the logo is worth redrawing as-is or whether the budget is better spent on a proper mark. A logo that has only ever existed as a low-resolution JPG rarely had much design process behind it in the first place.

Нужен полный пакет файлов логотипа? Посмотрите нашу услугу дизайна логотипа или .