Looking sharp: preparing your logo files the right way

You've chosen the product, approved the quote, settled on the quantity. Then comes the seemingly trivial moment where you send us your logo and, more often than not, this is where it's decided whether the final result looks professional or cheap. A brilliant logo, carefully built by a designer, can come out a disaster on a mug or a T-shirt if it reaches us as a small JPG pulled from a slide deck or saved off a website. Not because we'd botch the printing, but because you simply cannot get a good result out of a poor file, no matter how good the machine is.

The good news is that you don't have to be a designer to send the right file. You just need to know what to ask for from whoever built your visual identity, and what to check before you hit send. This guide explains, in plain but technically correct terms, which file types help us, why colour and resolution matter, which logo versions are worth having ready, and which small mistakes can delay your order by days. At the end you get a checklist you can paste straight into your email to your design supplier.

A good print starts with a good file

Personalising a product — whether it's screen printing on a T-shirt, pad printing on a pen, laser engraving on a travel mug, or embroidery on a cap — means translating your logo into a physical process. Each process has its own requirements, but they all share one thing: they start from the file you give us. If the file is clean, scalable and properly defined, we can reproduce your logo faithfully. If it's blurry, compressed or ambiguous, we either have to rebuild it by hand (which costs time and money) or print what we've got and hope it works.

The difference between those two outcomes is invisible on your screen. On a monitor, a 600-pixel JPG looks perfectly acceptable. The problem shows up when that file has to be scaled to the real print size or converted for an engraving machine. That's when the jagged edges appear, the dirty grey halo around the letters, and the colours that don't match your brand. The screen lies to you; the print doesn't.

The practical takeaway is simple: the five minutes you spend sending the right file saves hours of back-and-forth, rounds of proofs, and in the worst case an entire run printed badly. Treat the logo file as part of the order, not as an administrative afterthought.

Vector vs. raster: why an SVG scales cleanly and a small JPG turns to mush

There are two fundamentally different ways to store an image. One is raster (or bitmap), which describes the image as a grid of coloured pixels — that's how JPG, PNG, GIF and BMP work. The other is vector, which describes the image mathematically, through points, lines and curves — that's how SVG, PDF, AI (Adobe Illustrator), EPS and CDR work. The difference isn't just technical; it determines whether your logo can be enlarged without falling apart.

A vector file has no fixed size. The curve that forms a C is the same formula whether you draw it the size of a stamp or the size of a billboard. The edges stay perfectly crisp at any scale. That's exactly why vector is the ideal format for personalisation: the same logo can go on a one-centimetre pen and a two-metre banner, with no loss of quality and no need for separate files.

A raster file, by contrast, has a fixed number of pixels. When you enlarge it, the software doesn't invent new detail — it just stretches the existing pixels, and the edges go soft, jagged or pixelated. If your logo is a 400×400 px PNG and it has to be printed at 20 cm, there's no technical method that makes that file come out sharp. AI "upscaling" sometimes helps with photographs, but on a logo built from lines and text it produces artefacts and guarantees nothing.

The golden rule: ask your designer for the original vector file (usually .ai, .eps, .pdf or .svg). If all you have is a raster, you need a very large one, which we'll get to below. But the first question always worth asking is: "Do you have the logo in vector format?"

Colour: Pantone/spot vs. CMYK vs. RGB

On-screen colour and printed colour live in two different worlds. A screen creates colour with light, mixing red, green and blue (RGB) — an additive system that starts from black and adds light. Printing creates colour with ink on paper or on an object, usually in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) — a subtractive system that starts from white and absorbs light. The two gamuts don't overlap perfectly, so a gorgeous electric blue on your monitor can come out duller and darker in print. That's not an error; it's the physics of the two media.

For personalisation there's a third, more precise system: spot colours, best known through the Pantone (PMS) system. A Pantone colour is an ink mixed to a fixed recipe, with a standardised code — for example Pantone 2935 C. Regardless of the supplier or the country, that code produces exactly the same colour. For screen printing, pad printing and most methods on textiles and objects, working in Pantone is the right way to guarantee that your brand's red is always the same red.

That's why, when you send us your logo, it's ideal to send the exact colour codes too: Pantone for spot inks, plus the CMYK equivalents for full-colour printing. If you have a brand guide, the codes are in there. If you don't, at least ask your designer "which Pantone is it?" — a single "2935 C" is worth more than ten descriptions along the lines of "the blue from our website."

A word on expectations: on coloured, transparent or metallic materials, the ink colour interacts with the surface. A yellow printed on a black mug looks different from the same yellow on a white one. We can help with a proof or a sample, but start from the assumption that your screen is not the final reference — the Pantone code is.

Resolution when raster is unavoidable

Sometimes there is no vector: the logo was drawn years ago, the designer is gone, or it's a scanned stamp. In those cases we work with raster, and then resolution becomes critical. The standard rule for print is 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final print size. "At the final size" is the part people miss most often.

300 dpi means nothing on its own unless you also state how big the image is. A file that's 300 dpi at 2 cm is small and useless at 15 cm. What matters is how many pixels the image has relative to the real print size. The maths is simple: for a 10 cm print (≈ 4 inches) at 300 dpi you need roughly 1,200 pixels along that side. For 20 cm, double that. If your file is 500 px and you want 20 cm, you don't have enough information, no matter what "dpi" the file properties claim.

A frequent trap is enlarging a small file in Photoshop and saving it "at 300 dpi." That adds no real detail; it just relabels the stretched pixels. Technically the dpi number goes up, but the sharpness doesn't. Another hazard is a JPG recompressed many times (sent over WhatsApp, downloaded, resent) — each save adds compression artefacts, especially around text and crisp edges.

If a raster is your only option, give us the largest and cleanest file you have, ideally an uncompressed PNG or TIFF at high resolution, exactly as it came out of the source, without running it through chat apps. And if the logo is simple — lines and text — it's almost always worth rebuilding it as a vector; it's a one-time investment that solves every future order.

Contrast, clear space and backgrounds

A logo needs air. Most visual identities define a "clear space" — a minimum zone around the logo into which no other text, graphic element or product edge intrudes. On a small object the temptation is to fill all the available space, but a logo crammed right to the edge looks amateurish and sometimes risks being clipped in printing. Give it room.

Contrast decides whether the logo is visible at all. A light grey logo on a light grey product disappears; fine text on a busy background becomes illegible from a metre away. Before you approve a placement, think about the actual colour of the object, not the mockup on your white screen. If the product is dark, you probably need a light version of the logo — more on that in the next section.

The file's background matters more than it seems. Send the logo with a transparent background (a PNG with transparency, or a vector), not sitting on a white rectangle. If the logo arrives on a white square and the product is coloured, we either print the white square too (ugly) or someone has to cut out the background by hand (time, and room for error). A clean file with a transparent background saves us work and saves you misunderstandings.

One-colour, reversed and mono versions

Your full-colour logo, with its shades and gradients, is perfect for screen and for full-colour print. But many personalisation methods work differently. Laser engraving, for instance, has no colour: the result is a single tone determined by the material underneath. Cheaper pad printing lays down one colour at a time. On a very small object, a logo with five colours and fine shadows turns into a muddy blob. For all of this you need alternative versions.

The one-colour version is the logo reduced to a single ink — usually solid black — with no gradients, no shadows, no effects. The reversed (or "knockout") version is the white or light variant, designed for dark backgrounds. The greyscale mono version is useful for engraving, where only contrast matters, not hue. If you have these variants ready, we can quickly pick the right one for each product and method.

It's worth asking your designer for all of them at once, as a pack: full-colour logo, solid black logo, white logo, and possibly a simplified variant for small sizes (for example without the tagline or fine details). It costs little now and solves your orders for years. A well-organised brand already has these files; if yours are missing, that's a sign your visual identity could use a small tidy-up.

Method-specific prep

Every personalisation technique has its own rules, and the ideal file differs from one to the next. Embroidery, for example, doesn't use your logo directly: it has to be "digitized" — turned into a stitch file (formats like .dst or .emb) that tells the machine the direction, density and order of the threads. Digitizing is a craft in itself. On top of that, embroidery has minimum-size limits: very small text, below a few millimetres, or very thin lines can't be stitched cleanly. A good embroidery logo is simple and has letters that are big enough.

Engraving — laser on metal, wood, glass or leather — produces a single tone, so the logo has to be thought of as a silhouette in one colour. Gradients, shadows and finely outlined text don't work; what matters is the clear shape and its contrast against the material. Send a clean one-colour version so we know exactly which area gets engraved.

Pad printing and screen printing on small objects (pens, lighters, USB sticks) work with tiny surfaces and often a single colour. Here, fine details get lost, and lines that are too thin fill in or vanish. The logo has to be simplified and, ideally, accompanied by its Pantone code. For UV digital print or textile transfers, on the other hand, full colour is fine and a high-quality colour vector file is perfect. Tell us the method up front and we can confirm whether the file is suitable or what adjustments are needed.

Fonts and outlines

If your logo contains text — a brand name, a tagline — that text is set in a font. The catch is that the font lives as a separate file on the designer's computer. If you send us an editable vector file (AI, EPS, PDF) without having "embedded" the font, then on our computer the text will either appear in a different font (the nearest one installed) or vanish altogether. The result: your logo looks subtly or badly wrong, with no one noticing right away.

The standard fix is converting the text to outlines (called "create outlines," "convert to curves," or "vectorising the text"). In effect, the letters stop being editable text and become pure vector shapes — just like the rest of the logo. Once converted, they no longer depend on any installed font and look identical on any computer and at any size. For production files, that's the rule: text is sent converted to curves.

Ask your designer for a production version with the fonts converted to outlines (keeping a separate editable version for the future, where the text stays as text). If you're not sure whether your file has the text converted, ask us — we can check quickly. It's far better to catch the problem now than after we've printed the company name in the wrong font.

Common file mistakes that delay an order

Most delays come not from machines or materials, but from files. Here are the patterns that show up again and again. The logo pulled out of a Word document or a PowerPoint: it reaches us small, compressed and sometimes with a background you can't even see. The logo downloaded from your own website: web images are optimised for fast loading, so they're low-resolution and in RGB. Screenshots of the logo: you're practically guaranteeing a small, blurry raster with dirty edges.

Other classics: the file sent through chat apps, which recompress the image and drop its quality; the logo on a white background when the product is coloured; the file with no colour codes, leaving us to guess the hue; or, conversely, three slightly different files with no word on which is the correct one. Each of these triggers an exchange of emails and pushes back the print approval.

And a category of its own: the assumption that "you already have our logo from last time." Maybe we do, but maybe the identity has changed since, or the previous order used a different version. Always confirm which file we should use. Two minutes of clarity at the start means zero surprises at delivery.

A pre-send checklist

Before you hit send, run through this list. Do you have the original vector file (.ai, .eps, .pdf or .svg)? If not, do you have the largest possible raster, enough for 300 dpi at the real print size, uncompressed and not run through chat apps? Have you included the exact colour codes — Pantone for spot, plus CMYK — or at least the brand guide?

Next: is the text converted to outlines in the production file? Do you have the alternative versions you might need — full-colour logo, solid black, white for dark backgrounds, maybe a simplified variant for small objects? Is the background transparent, not a white rectangle? And if we're doing embroidery or engraving, do you know extra steps may be needed (digitizing, a single tone) and have you sent a simplified version?

Finally, tell us clearly which product and which method you want for the personalisation, and confirm which file to use if you've worked with us before. If you tick this list, you're among the top customers who send us good files — and, more importantly, you'll end up holding exactly the product you imagined. If you're in doubt on any point, send us what you have and ask; we'd take a question at the start over a surprise at the end any day.