The logo handover is where a lot of brand work quietly falls apart. The design is signed off, one file gets emailed, and six months later the logo is on a sign, stretched, in the wrong colour, pulled off a website at 400 pixels wide. None of that is the client's fault. They were given one file and left to work out the rest.
Vector is the master, everything else is a copy
A vector file — SVG, AI, EPS or a vector PDF — stores the logo as mathematical shapes. It can be scaled to a business card or a building without ever going soft, and colours can still be edited. Everything else in the pack is exported from it.
Give the client the vector even if they will never open it. Their printer will ask for it, their sign maker will ask for it, and the agency they hire in two years will ask for it. A client who cannot produce a vector file ends up asking someone to trace the logo from a JPG, and the result is never quite right.
SVG is the most useful vector format to include because it opens in a browser and works directly on the web. Include EPS or PDF as well if the client works with printers who expect them.
Raster exports: what to include and at what size
Most day-to-day use is raster, so provide those exports rather than making the client generate them. PNG with a transparent background is the workhorse — it drops onto any colour without a white box behind it. Provide a large one, around 2000 pixels on the long edge, and a smaller web-sized one around 500.
Include a JPG version too, on white. It sounds redundant, but plenty of systems — some job boards, older CRMs, certain print portals — reject PNG or handle transparency badly, and a client without a JPG will make one themselves by screenshotting.
If a logo has been supplied to you as SVG and you need the raster versions, converting SVG to PNG at a chosen size keeps the transparency intact and takes seconds. Export from the vector each time rather than resizing a PNG, since enlarging a raster file cannot recover detail that was never there.
The versions that prevent damage
A single full-colour logo is not enough for real life, and its absence is what causes most brand misuse.
Include a reversed version — usually white — for dark backgrounds. Without it, someone will place the dark logo on a dark photo and add a white box behind it. Include a single-colour black version for faxes, stamps, embroidery, engraving and anything printed in one ink. And include a horizontal and a stacked lockup if the logo has both, because a client facing a wide narrow space will otherwise stretch whichever one they have.
If there is a mark that works without the wordmark — an icon, a monogram — supply that separately. It is what ends up as the app icon, the social avatar and the favicon, and those will exist whether you provide them or not.
Name the files so they cannot be confused
Use a consistent pattern: brand, version, colour, size. Something like acme-logo-horizontal-full-colour-2000px.png tells the person opening it exactly what they have. Compare that with logo-final-2-NEW.png, which is how most handovers actually look and which guarantees the wrong file gets used.
Group them into folders by type — one for vector, one for PNG, one for JPG — so a non-designer can find the right thing without opening each file.
Write the one-page rules
A full brand book is often more than a small client needs. A single page usually is not. Cover the clear space around the logo, a minimum size, which backgrounds each version belongs on, and a short list of what not to do: do not stretch it, do not recolour it, do not add effects, do not rebuild it in Word.
Include the brand colours as HEX, RGB and CMYK values on the same page. When the client's printer asks for the colour and there is no answer to hand, someone picks one — and that is how a brand ends up with three slightly different blues.
Common questions
What logo file formats should I give a client?
At minimum: a vector master such as SVG, EPS or vector PDF; transparent PNGs at a large and a web size; and a JPG on white for systems that reject transparency. Add reversed, single-colour and icon-only versions of each, since those are the ones that prevent misuse later.
Why does the client need a vector file if they cannot open it?
Because the people they hire will need it. Printers, sign makers, embroiderers and future agencies all ask for vector artwork. A client without one ends up paying someone to trace the logo from a low-resolution image, and the traced version is never an exact match.
Is SVG or PNG better for a website logo?
SVG, in almost every case. It stays sharp on any screen density, the file is usually smaller, and it can be recoloured with CSS. Keep a PNG alongside it for email signatures, social profiles and any platform that will not accept SVG uploads.
Do small clients really need brand guidelines?
A full brand book, usually not. A single page — clear space, minimum size, which version goes on which background, the colour values, and a short do-not list — takes very little time and prevents most of the misuse that would otherwise come back to you as unpaid corrections.
Last updated 2 September 2026