File for Safe Keeping

What's the most important piece of advice I'd give to my clients? There are so many great ones

- Never settle for less than what you want. Your designer can't tell if you're not happy with the design unless you tell us. Even if it takes a week longer to achieve the perfect result. Rather delay a launch than have a less than perfect image.

- Take the time to understand the processes. Know what it is that you require from your designer and printer before you attempt to brief them. More often than not mistakes are caused by incomplete briefs. If you don't know, ask until you do understand and can visualise the completed project.

- Always protect your company's identity. Take every opportunity to further your brand's excellence. Always make sure that you follow your corporate identity. The correct font in the correct colour at the correct resolution. If your colour is royal blue, make sure that the printed colour is royal blue...not sky blue, darkish blueish blue, in between blue colour. Granted, with the various printing processes it's hard to get the colours spot on every single time. Spot on is always first prize. But 'as close as possible' is sometimes necessary.

Which brings me to the most important piece of advice - keep your files safe. Know the difference between your files. What am I on about? Well. You've commissioned a corporate identity. The full tooty. Logo, business card, letterhead, folder as well as a brochure! You've splashed out! The designs have been approved and your designer has emailed you the final versions of your artwork. They've probably sent you PDF's and JPEGS and GIFS and PNG's....probably more file types than you expected! And then there's the original artwork that you can't open because you don't have the design software installed on your computer. How do you know which file is for what purpose?


PDF'S: I call these the holy files. Hold onto them for dear life. If you own a safe - these are the files you want to burn and store in that safe! PDF is an acronym for Portable Document Format. Let's skip the technical stuff (maybe because I'm not sure I could explain it all!) and move onto the why and what for. PDF's are created from the original vector design files. They are
• the most convenient type of file for exchanging artwork because they are vector based files that retain a high quality for printing,
• able to be opened by a number of different design software programs, but are
• compressed to a convenient file size.

Ergo, PDF's are for printing. If your printer or new designer ever ask you for a logo, you should send these PDF's as they can then work with the highest quality from the get go. Whenever you're requested to send a logo for something to be printed, send the PDF.
As always, life is not always that straight forward. PDF's are not limited to only vector files. So some of your files might be JPEG's that have been saved as PDF's to save space...What I can tell you, is that PDF's are still the better option to send to anyone.


JPEG's: These are the files you'd most commonly use in-house. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group....(which I just Googled because I didn't know) What I do know is that JPEG's or JPG's are flattened files. A JPEG is a standardised image compression mechanism. JPEG is designed for compressing either full-colour or grey-scale digital images of "natural" (real-world) scenes.
It works well on photographs, naturalistic artwork, and similar material; not so well on lettering, simple cartoons, or black-and-white line drawings (files come out very large). The awesome thing about JPEG's is that the degree of compression can be adjusted. The greater the compression the lower the quality of the file and the smaller the file. Therefore it's easy to judge the quality of the image by checking the file size....mostly. When you need to send a photographic image, you'll be sending a JPEG more often than not.
Imagine for a second that your logo was 3 overlapping red, pink and blue circles on a white background. When your logo is flattened/compressed as a JPEG there would no longer be 3 overlapping circles. It would be one flat file showing one image of these overlapping circles. Because the file no longer consists of separate components, the file is smaller due to compressing/flattening. This compressing reduces not only the size of the file, but the quality of the file too. Not great for logos.
When your designer asks for your logo, try not to send the jpeg. They'll be limited by the flatness and wouldn't have as much room to work within. Imagine that your flattened tri circle logo appears with a white background. If you only ever wanted the background to be white - no real problem as long as the file is as large as the medium you need it for. However, if you wanted to overlay your tri circles onto a yellow background, you'd be stuck with a logo in a white block on a yellow background. Sure, your designer is smart enough to know how to solve this problem but it'll take them time to fix the problem. Time equals money which you'll receive a bill for.
So what do you use the JPEG logo for? Online files - logos for your web designer, uploading your logo online, electronic letterheads that will only be emailed, electronic files that will only ever be viewed on a screen. Internal files that don't need to be the best quality....though that statement in itself should dissuade you from even considering it. Remember, your brand should always be the very best quality!


GIF's: GIF's are most commonly used online. GIF stands for Graphic Interchange File (I actually do remember this one!). Images can also be saved as GIF's though they are lower resolution. Because they're lower resolution, they are smaller in size which is perfect for websites which need to display quickly. Generally speaking, the fewer colours used in the image, the better the GIF would work. You could then capitalise on the small file size. I find that I usually create email signatures as GIF's.


PNG's: PNG stands for Portable Network Graphic. PNG is superior to GIF in that it has better compression and supports millions of colours. Whenever I want to create a small, flat file with a transparent background I save them as PNG's. Remember that hypothetical tri circle logo....this would be a solution should you want to overlay it onto that yellow background. However, I would only ever use them for electronic and online files.

Quite a mouthful? Yes, indeed....(another excuse to find a knowledgeable designer to help guide you through the uses) so in parting, I can tell you that a JPEG, GIF and PNG can easily be created from a PDF. A PDF and vector file can be created from the others but not quite as easily. Try to always use and send the PDF unless you are sending a photographic image or have specifically been requested to send that file type.