As a marketing firm, It is important to educate customers about logos, artwork, and the types of file formats.
WurkHub creates a lot of art to promote a client’s business, products, and or services. One of the first items we ask for is “the original logo”. Rarely does a small business have one. Normally, we get “A Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy” because that is all they have. It’s not their fault, it’s because they have not been taught the value and importance of their brand.
A company’s brand (logo, colors, artwork, tagline, promise) IS the first thing that people see to identify with that company. It is the life of the company. It is placed on the door, indoor and outdoor signage, banners, business cards, brochures, trade show booths, hats, t-shirts, buses, race cars, and even tattoos. That is why it is crucial to have a well-thought-out and clean, clear vector logo.
We were asked to do t-shirts for the local establishment’s volleyball team and this is what we received. As you can see below, the logo is “A Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy” your eyes are not deceiving you is very fuzzy.
Maybe you can get away with this for internet purposes but not for printing. A printer would laugh at us, maybe not out loud but internally yes. As graphic designers, we know better, but the customer does not. It is our job to teach the value of good design and to keep those designs in a safe place so they will have them for the duration of their business, I must add a disclaimer to that statement because every generation (10-20 years) your logo should be revisited and possibly reworked, updated, or redesigned to keep current with your target market.
The shirts that were ordered were neon green. Yikes! So the current logo colors did not work. The grey on the chartreuse green was an optical nightmare so we changed the colors to black and white to let that lovey bright green shine through. Below is the revised vector artwork.
If the client pays for the artwork I believe it should be theirs. However many times the customers expect to be given the artwork for free because they purchased materials. This practice devalues the industry. It is better to educate the client that it took x number of hours to produce this work and THAT has value. There is a cost to developing graphic art for any project. Many times a DIY customer will create a logo on Canva later to discover that they can not use it for printing. Once again a vector file is needed. From this valuable file, you can create a jpg, or png, send it to a digitizer for embroidering, or your printer for banners and larger format printing. This is the reason to hire a professional and the dollar amount spent is small in comparison to the benefits.
We use Brandox to share and store our designs for our customers. Having your design assets in one place will save everyone the hassle of searching emails and files for the reversion of a revision of that artwork. WurkHub gives the client a thumbnail or flash drive of the art and asks them to place it in their safe and not the junk drawer. A brand logo that represents your business is important to safeguard. Let us know if we can be of service.
WurkHub Digital Marketing is located in lovely downtown Waukesha and can be reached at 262-893-9539
