What’s the big deal, right? There’s a bit of confusion when it comes to the missing logo dilemma. Your logo looks great on your website, shining with glory in its dedicated menu space. But if that’s the only copy you have, you should probably rethink your marketing materials. A logo saved for web is not acceptable for print.

“Why not,” you may be thinking. “It looks perfectly fine!” And it should! It should be perfectly sized for how it’s viewed on your website, at a resolution of 72 dots per inch (DPI). It’s probably saved as a JPG or PNG file. These files rely on pixels, and 72 dots per inch will show magnificently on our screens. But to print, a JPG or PNG can be a nightmare because print files need to be 300 dpi.

Whoa. If we try to scale up your 72dpi logo, the software we’re using will guess what all the dots from 72 to 300 should fill with. This is when we see blurry, pixellated, or rasterized images. Even using powerful tools such as Photoshop or Illustrator, we can’t* fix pixellation (*We maybe can, but it’s a lot of work and depends entirely on your original image). The best solution? Make sure you have a vector file. The file name will end with .ai, .eps, .svg, or possibly .pdf. You may not be able to view it with your software, but any designer friends you make will love you for this file. It’s infinitely scaleable because it uses mathematical equations and angles to take form. It will look great on a business card, on a billboard, or on the side of a building. It’s easily editable to change specs to print on a copier or on a press.

Your web logo should stay right where it belongs. Let the vectors do the heavy lifting printing. If you don’t have your logo in a vector format, please consider contacting us and we will work with you to get your brand to current print standards!