You’ve just hired a designer for your new logo. You’re excited. The kickoff call is going great.
Then they ask: “What formats will you need this delivered in?”
And you think: I don’t know. Can’t you just… make it?
Here’s what you need to know: Your designer isn’t testing your technical knowledge. They’re trying to protect you from having to pay them twice.
When a designer asks about formats, they’re really asking: “Where are you going to use this, and how can I make sure you’re not stuck when you get there?”
Real-World Design Nightmares
In our nearly 10 years of providing full-service graphic design, we’ve helped a number of clients get out of design quagmires. Here are three scenarios that might sound familiar:
The Trade Show Booth
You get a gorgeous logo. It looks perfect on your website, your business cards, your email signature. Then six months later, you need a banner for a trade show. The print company asks for a vector file. You send what you have. They tell you it’ll print fuzzy at that size. Now you’re calling your designer three days before the show, asking if they can “make it bigger.” (Spoiler: They can’t. They need to recreate it. That’s an invoice you didn’t budget for.)
The Donor Event Invitation
You want to send beautiful printed invitations to make the right impression for a high-end donor event. You hand off your brand assets to the printer—after all, your designer delivered everything in a Figma file and it looks gorgeous on screen. The printer tells you the files are web resolution and will print blurry and pixelated. You’re three weeks out from your event. You can either pay rush fees for your designer to create proper print files, use the terrible -quality prints and look less professional to your biggest donors, or scramble to find a digital-only invitation solution when you specifically wanted a printed piece.
The T-Shirt Emergency
Your team wants branded t-shirts for a company event. The screen printer needs your logo in a specific color format—no gradients, no transparency. The gorgeous layered logo you have won’t work. Your designer can absolutely create a simplified version. But you’re paying for design time you could have avoided.
The Expensive Realization
“Screen resolution and print resolution are not the same thing—and you can’t just ‘make it bigger.'”
This is the painful realization that happens when your print vendor rejects your file, or when your designer explains that turning your 2-inch screen logo into a 6-foot banner requires recreating the entire file from scratch.
Your website logo is built for screens (it usually has a resolution of 72 DPI, or dots per inch). Your trade show banner needs print resolution (300 DPI minimum). While you can shrink a 300 DPI logo to 72 DPI, you unfortunately cannot enlarge a lower resolution logo into a larger logo. And so, if you create a digital-first logo, you’re going to have to pay for logo work twice. And that’s assuming you have the right format.
What “Formats” Actually Means
In addition to size, different use cases require different file types:
Print needs vector files (like .ai, .eps, or .pdf) that scale infinitely without losing quality. Your event booth and your business card can use the same file. If you’re printing photos or complex imagery, you need very high-resolution raster files (PNGs or JPGs)—we’re talking 2000+ pixels wide at minimum, often much larger depending on the final print size.
Digital/web needs multiple formats. For logos, SVG files are ideal—they scale perfectly without losing quality and can be edited directly by developers. For photos and other images, you need raster files (like .png or .jpg) optimized for screens. PNGs support transparent backgrounds for overlaying on photos, while JPGs work well when you need a solid background.
Special applications need special versions: If you’re looking to embroidery your logo on clothing, use a single-color version for black and white printing, or create a favicon for your website in the browser tab, you’ll need different versions of your logo. Large, full-color files won’t work in these scenarios.
That’s why a good designer asks about formats upfront; their goal is to save you from having to come back later—often when you’re in a time crunch and will be charged rush fees to fix a problem that could have been prevented.
Most good designers will deliver standard files without the formats conversation: a color version, maybe a black-and-white version, a few common formats. That’s a standard package. But a design partner will inquire about your usage, present and future, as well as be available when special cases occur. And if you’ve given them enough notice, you won’t be charged those pesky rush fees. That’s when a relationship with a design firm means less headaches for you.
The Logo Design Questionnaire:
Here are some questions our designers ask before beginning a logo design. You’ll notice none of them ask you to know the file format you need, just the usage. You can save time when working with a designer by getting detailed answers about usage from your team ahead of time.
- Where will this appear first? (Website, print materials, social media, signage)
- What’s the largest size we’ll need? (Business card vs. billboard matters)
- Will this need to work in black and white? (Your audience may print this at home; faxes still exist; so do newspaper ads and stamps)
- Do we want branded merchandise? (T-shirts, mugs, pens, bags—these need simplified versions of your logo.)
- Will we need this for embroidery or engraving? (These can’t handle complex details and typically need one or two-color versions of the logo.)
- Do we exhibit at trade shows or events? (Banners, tablecloths, backdrops need large-scale files)
- Will this go on vehicles or outdoor signage? (Weather-resistant printing has format requirements)
- Do we need versions for different social media platforms? (Square, circular, horizontal layouts)
You don’t need perfect answers to all of these. But thinking through them for five minutes will save you from expensive surprises later.
| Try this: “Here’s what I know we need immediately: [website, business cards, whatever]. And here’s what I think we might need eventually: [best guesses about future uses].” Your designer will translate that into the actual formats you need. That’s their job. Your job is just to help them understand how you’ll use their work—so they can protect you from expensive do-overs down the road. |
Next in this series: When your designer asks about your timeline, they’re calculating more than you think.
This article was written by Sophie Greenbaum and Sage Eubanks with the help of claude.ai. As a small business, we thoughtfully engage artificial intelligence to improve our efficiency, while also using human experts and reviewers to ensure quality and mitigate bias.
Photo by Roman Samborskyi.