I can’t tell you the number of times clients have asked me to design their signs but don’t have, or don’t know where they put, their art files. This is not a huge surprise. Many small business owners have a lot on their plates and keeping track of logo files or developing brand image standards is not high on their priority list. Larger companies will have these things but often the client doesn’t know who in the organization to ask.

Well, here are a couple of suggestions for dealing with art files:

• If you work for a larger organization, contact your marketing department or the most senior administrative assistant. One or the other probably has access to the “official” logo file from the graphic designer who created it and may also require some level of design review before you produce anything. Use of the company brand is serious business so make sure you get approval before going to production.
• If you don’t have a marketing department, find out who orders stationery, business cards, etc. for your company. This person, or the supplier, will have a logo file as well as the color specifications needed to reproduce the logo with consistent colors.
• If you know who designed the art, go back to that person/firm and request the file. Any art that you or your company paid to have created is your property and you have every right to access copies of that art from your supplier.
• If you don’t have a clean file (preferably an .eps or adobe based file) then you may need to improvise and work with your sign company to recreate the art. We can redraw logos from scanned images and low resolution .jpgs. We’ve even recreated logos scratch. Be advised, most sign companies do NOT include art (re)creation in their base pricing and will likely charge you for design time if they have to do a lot of work to get usable art.

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