Raster vs vector for logo design - my client taught me a hard lesson

I spent 3 hours on a logo in Photoshop for a local coffee shop in Portland. Looked great on screen. Then they wanted it on a billboard. The raster file turned into a pixelated mess when I scaled it up. I had to rebuild the whole thing in Illustrator from scratch. That extra time cost me $200 off my usual rate. Now I only start logos in vector, even for small jobs. Has anyone else had a project blow up because you picked the wrong file type?

2 comments

2 Comments

walker.julia5h ago

Funny you mention Portland. My cousin runs a food cart there and had a guy design their logo in Microsoft Paint of all things. Sent them a .bmp file. They tried to print it on a banner and it looked like someone dropped a pixel bomb on a hot dog. The cart is called "Dirty Dog" and the logo was this scrappy little wiener dog. They spent months telling people it was supposed to look intentionally blurry as a style choice. Total disaster. I think about that every time I see a shop with a weirdly fuzzy sign.

wren_mitchell34m ago

Microsoft Paint logos are a CLASSIC small business mistake. If you're going DIY, at least use something like Canva or even just a free vector program online so you can save it as an SVG. A .bmp file is basically a crime against printing, it's meant for screens not banners. For a food cart especially, you want a clean simple design that can scale down to a sticker or up to a truck wrap without looking like a potato. Next time tell your cousin to demand a vector file format like .ai or .eps from whoever makes the logo. If they can't provide that, they're not a real designer.