Hanley Designs Product 2

A Little Info About Your Logo

When a company goes about getting a logo or brand to represent themselves, they do not think about all the ways that logo is going to be used in the future. I'm here to tell you there are many!! You are going to use that logo imprinted on t-shirts, printed on brochures, flyers, letterhead, business cards, etc. You are going to use it on promotional products such as pens and hats, clocks, keytags, mousepads, awards, plaques, and a thousand other items. There are several ways to place your logo on these things including imprinting, embroidery, etching, screen printing, etc.

So, what does all this mean? It means you need to think about these issues before you get your logo created. The more colors you use, the more expensive it's going to be regarding printed material. The larger, more complex a logo is, the more the cost for embroidery which is based on stitch count (not colors).

The font you use is also important. It should be one that is not too obscure that it cannot be found to be recreated, if necessary.

You should use solid colors and not screens, or percentages, of colors, although screens are acceptable. Colors should match the Pantone Color System which is a uniform matching system which will give you a constant color match each time you send your logo out. If a vendor can use "spot" (PMS) colors instead of having to make CYMK plates, your cost will be less expensive.

And lastly, you should always have available to vendors (printers, graphic designers, advertising companies, promotional products companies, etc.) a LINE ART rendition of your logo - an original or copy of original file that created the logo, NOT A BITMAP, JPG, GIF, etc. file - these files are made of thousands of "pixels" - tiny color squares that make up the bitmap. Vendors much prefer a line art file - an .AI, .CDR, .EPS file because it can be reduced and enlarged without losing resolution. And, if possible, let the vendor know what font was used in creating your logo in case the vendor has to recreate it. If your graphic designer does his/her job correctly, the font used in creating your logo will have been changed "to curves" so that the computer will view it as a graphic instead of a font and it will look the same on every computer.