ShopForDesigns – Logo design marketplace, website design, corporate identity design, banner design, crowdsourcing.

So now that you have won your logo design contest what comes next is preparing the deliverables for the contest holder which you will need to upload to the website. Here a very helpful tip that we can give you is that if you want the contest holder to give you future work, and most cases we see it happen, then you need to please him with your professionalism. Sending him great deliverables could really be your first step in winning your next graphic design project.

All said and done let us get into the details of planning your deliverables folder. Well now that the battle is won and you emerge victorious still its only a journey half done until you get the client to say the real “wow” in your favour.

Here we outline the tricks and techniques that will help you do it. We would say that as a logo designer or a graphic designer it is your responsibility to get across the proper files to your contest holder even if he has not asked for it.

What file formats should you offer?

Offering a wide range of file formats will make your contest holder very satisfied. This is because in a few days the contest holder might require to publish his logo on his brochure, his business card, might require to show it on television and even blow it up and put it up on a hoarding on the freeway.

You might also consider offering him a favicon which we find many websites do without but we wonder how they do without it.

Let us study the file formats one by one :

EPS : The EPS file format stands for Encapsulated PostScript file. It is a vector format file which you should offer as a deliverable first and foremost as a graphic designer. This file will be required by the contest holder if he needs to blow up his logo to a bigger size without compromising the quality of the logo.

An EPS file can also be imported into a large number of graphic design software programs so you can see that its pretty much a standard format in the graphic design world. So remember to offer this graphic format along with your deliverables.

AI / PSD : AI stands for Adobe Illustrator file and PSD stands for PhotoShop Document. The PSD file preserves all the layers which you created while making the logo or graphic design.

These are also vector formats and if required the client can produce high quality prints from it.

JPG and GIF : These formats are raster formats and not vector ones. This means that they can not be scaled without compromising on the quality of the graphic. So one might ask why is it necessary to provide these formats. The reason being, every contest holder might not have immense knowledge about graphic designing and they might not know how to convert a EPS or a PSD into web publishable formats like GIF and JPGs. So it would be wise to give them a fair quality GIF or JPG of their design so that they can publish the same without needing intervention from another designer.

TIFF : The acronym TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format. A TIFF is much better in clarity than a GIF or a JPEG and it is also more or less universal in the graphic world. A TIFF generally has a very large size though so it might be difficult to send across. But if you can then there is no harm sending it over. They are generally made at 300dpi so they are suitable for attaching to word document of for printing on letterheads etc.

What colour schemes should you offer?

Full Colour : This is a no brainer. You should provide the contest holder with full colour CMYK which he would be needing for print. You should also provide full colour RGB files for publishing on the web. If you give them the CMYK format that will save then the hassle of seeing strange and unexpected colours when they print the designs.

Black and Reversed Logos : The best way to please the buyer is to offer a logo in reversed colour. So consider doing a logo in black (monochrome) and reversed colour too. Here, please take note, that we are talking about two formats black and reversed so do not misunderstand black as reversed or vice versa. Our experience says that offering these formats makes the buyer very happy in most cases.

Favicon – last but not the least

The word favicon is short form for favourites icon. It is also known as website icon, shortcut icon, url icon or bookmark icon. It is the small graphical shape that appears on the left hand side of the address bar right before the url. It is not very hard to create but adds a dimension to the website in terms of its professionalism. Most designers do not do this as a part of the deliverable but if done then it will set you apart from other designers make your services sought for.