A depressing number of businesses own a logo they cannot use. They have a PNG from a designer who has moved on, no editable source, and every printer, sign maker, and embroiderer asks for something they do not have. The formats are not complicated, and knowing which ones to insist on turns a logo from a picture you were sent into an asset you actually own.
Vector versus raster, in one paragraph
A vector file describes shapes with mathematics, so it can be scaled to any size, from a favicon to the side of a building, with no loss of quality, and its colours can be edited. A raster file is a grid of pixels at a fixed resolution, so enlarging it produces blur.
Your logo must exist as vector artwork. Everything else is exported from it. If the only file anyone can find is a JPG or PNG, you do not have a logo master, you have a photograph of one, and it will need rebuilding before it can be used properly.
The files to insist on
SVG. The vector format for the web. Small, sharp at any size, scriptable, and colour editable in code. This is the primary file for your website, and for most digital use.
PDF (vector). The universal exchange format for print. Every printer, sign maker, and production house accepts it, and unlike a design file it opens anywhere.
EPS. Older, still requested by some print and manufacturing suppliers, particularly embroidery and signage. Cheap to include, occasionally essential.
PNG, at several sizes, with transparent background. For everything that will not take vector: presentations, documents, email signatures, third party platforms. Supply at least a small, medium, and large version so nobody scales one badly.
Favicon and app icon exports. SVG plus PNG at 32 and 180 pixels, and a square icon version, because these placements need a purpose drawn variant rather than a scaled lockup.
The editable source file. Whatever the designer worked in, with fonts either outlined or supplied. This is the master. Without it, every future change starts over.
JPG is the one format your logo should never be delivered in, because it cannot hold transparency and it introduces compression artefacts around edges. If someone sends a JPG logo, ask again.
Every variant, in every format
The formats are one axis. The variants are the other, and this is where most handovers are incomplete.
You need the full lockup, the compact lockup, and the icon alone. Each of those in full colour, in single colour black, and in single colour white (reversed) for dark backgrounds. That reversed version is the one most often missing, and it is needed the first time someone puts the logo on a photograph or emails in a dark themed client.
The result is a folder with a boring, obvious structure, named so a stranger can find what
they need without asking. Names like logo-full-colour.svg and logo-icon-white.png beat
final_v3_NEW.png every single time, and the difference shows up years later.
The specification that travels with the files
Files alone are not a brand. Include a short document, one or two pages, covering:
Colour values in every space you will actually use: HEX for screen, RGB for digital documents, CMYK for print, and Pantone if anything is being printed at volume. The typefaces, with their names and licence status, since a logo using a font you are not licensed to use is a problem waiting to surface. Minimum sizes, clear space, and a short list of what not to do (do not stretch, do not recolour, do not add effects, do not place on a busy photo).
That is enough for most businesses. A long manual gets ignored; two pages in one findable location gets followed.
Own the files, and check them once
Two practical points that cost nothing now and a great deal later.
Confirm ownership in writing. Your contract should state that you own the marks and the source files outright, and that you have them. This is standard, and the time to establish it is before final payment.
Test the handover. Open every file. Check the SVG renders correctly in a browser. Check the PNGs really do have transparent backgrounds. Check the reversed version is actually white rather than a white shape on a white background that looks empty. Give the PDF to your printer and ask them to confirm it is usable. Five minutes of checking prevents the discovery, two years on, that half the folder is unusable and the designer is unreachable.
Then store it somewhere the whole company can reach, not on one laptop, because the most common reason businesses pay to have a logo rebuilt is not that it was lost by a designer. It is that it was lost by them.
Inherited a logo with no source files and no idea what you own? Send what you have and we will tell you what is missing: hello@beconfidency.agency.
If you want a complete, usable identity package rather than a picture, that is exactly what our brand identity service is for.