In so many ways, your branding is the face of your business or organization. Upon having their first encounter with you, people will attach their first impression feelings to your logo and colors and each subsequent time they see your branding those foundational feelings will return to have more experiences and memories built upon them.
It's important to manage your brand in a consistent manner - using the same font, colors, and logo in various applications. Most business owners understand this, however many fail to realize that without the original digital files for their branding elements, the ability to manage a brand consistently deteriorates with time as technology changes and ways and places to market change.
This was the case for one business owner who wanted to have their website rebuilt using a system that would help their content be more viewable on the smaller screens of mobile devices. When the web designer asked the original files to make new logos graphics for the news site, the business owner offered to send a scan of one of his business cards which had his logo on it. Somewhere along the line, the owner had either lost the original files for his logo or they had never been given to him in the first place.
We have helped a number of businesses who no longer have the original files for their logos and branding by recreating them in all the formats they may require now and in the future for various applications such as web pages, stationery, swag (t-shirts, pens), print advertising, billboards, and more.
Here is a list of every file format and type we think every business should have in their possession so that they can manage the presentation quality of their branding.
Original Font Files
It's important to have the original font files for a number of reasons. Simply resizing a graphic with text in it often degrades the edges of text appearing in the graphic. However, making a new graphic by changing the size of text using the original font file ensures your brand assets will maintain a high quality of appearance.
Having the original font file also allows you to match graphics you may have created in the future to your existing branding. This will also save you money because whomever you have making those graphics will not have to go on quest to try and match their work to your brand.
Original Color Codes
Original Vector Files
Vector files are the best way to maintain a high quality of appearance for your branding because the quality of the graphics they produce is always true to the original, regardless of the size you recreate them in (within reason since all shapes will become a dot if you shrink them enough). Once you have created a graphic from a vector file, you can then save copies of the file in different formats for different applications (ie, png, jpeg, etc).
There are number of different filter types that are vector files. We always supply our clients with Adobe Illustrator (.ai), Encapsulated Postscript (.eps), and Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) because that will leave them in good place if our "hit by a bus" policy comes into effect.
To learn more about vector files, check out this article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics
Photoshop Files
Photoshop (.psd) files are raster files, not vector files. But because Photoshop is such a common graphics editor, we also supply our clients with files in that format. Better safe than sorry!
