Logo files explained: AI, SVG, EPS, PDF and PNG, and which ones you should receive

You need three things to produce almost anything with your logo: one vector master (an SVG or a PDF, ideally also the original AI file), a transparent PNG at around 2000px wide, and your colour codes for print and screen. With those, a printer, a signage maker, a web developer and whoever runs your Instagram can each get what they need without redrawing anything. A complete handover goes further, with every lockup and colour version in each format, but those three are the floor.

If all you have is a JPG that someone sent over WhatsApp, you are missing all three, and that is a very common situation for small businesses in Kuwait. It is not a disaster, but it means every supplier will rebuild the logo from a picture, and each rebuild will be slightly different. Over a year that is how a brand ends up with three greens and two versions of its Arabic name.

The rest of this guide explains what each format is, who asks for it and why, how colour codes work, and how to check a folder from a designer in a few minutes. If you are about to commission a logo, it doubles as a checklist of what to ask for in writing. If you already have a logo, it shows what to request from whoever made it. Everything here also applies to the full identity work on our branding page.

Every logo file is one of two kinds. A raster file (PNG, JPG, WebP) is a grid of coloured pixels. It has a fixed size: make it bigger than it was saved and it turns soft, then blocky. A vector file (SVG, AI, EPS, and usually PDF) stores the logo as mathematical shapes: curves, lines and fills. You can scale it to the size of a pen or the side of a building and the edges stay perfectly sharp.

That is why vector files are called masters. Every other file can be produced from them, but you cannot go the other way. A designer can export a crisp PNG of any size from an SVG in seconds; turning a PNG back into a clean vector means tracing it, which is redrawing, and the result is never exactly the original. That is the step your signage maker is doing, silently, when you send them a JPG.

Vector also matters for how things are physically made. Sign workshops cut letters with routers and lasers that follow vector paths. Vinyl cutters for shop windows and car stickers follow paths. Embroidery software builds stitches from shapes. Foil and emboss plates for boxes are made from vector artwork. In each case a raster file has to be converted first, by someone who did not design your logo.

So the first question to ask about any logo folder is simple: is there at least one true vector file in it? Not a PNG renamed to .pdf, which happens more often than you would think, but a file that stays sharp when you zoom in as far as you can.

AI is the native file of Adobe Illustrator, where most logos are drawn. It is the working source: layers, guides, every version on its own artboard. You need it if another designer will ever edit the logo, but most suppliers cannot open it without Illustrator, so it is for archives and designers, not for sending to a printer as your only file.

EPS is an older vector format that print shops have accepted for decades. Some Kuwait printers and signage makers still ask for it by name, so it is worth having, but it is gradually being replaced by PDF, and it handles transparency and some effects poorly. If a supplier asks for EPS and you only have PDF or AI, ask whether a vector PDF will do; very often it will.

PDF is the most useful single file to send to a printer. A properly exported PDF keeps the logo as vector, opens on any computer and can carry print colours. The catch is that a PDF can also contain nothing more than a flat image, so check it as described further down. SVG is the web's vector format. Browsers display it natively, it stays sharp on every screen, and it is what a developer wants for a website header, a Shopify store theme or an app.

A complete handover includes all four for the main lockups. If you have to prioritise, keep the AI file safe for the future, send PDF to print, send SVG to web and app, and keep EPS for the supplier who insists on it.

PNG is the raster format you will use most day to day. It supports transparency, so the logo sits on a photo, a coloured background or a website without a white box around it. Ask for PNGs of every lockup and colour version at a generous size, around 2000px on the long side, and a few smaller exports for social profiles and email signatures. A white logo should come as a transparent PNG too, even though it looks invisible when you open it on a white screen.

JPG has no transparency and uses compression that smears sharp edges and flat colours, which is exactly what logos are made of. It is fine for a photograph that happens to contain your logo, but a poor format for the logo itself. If a designer delivers only JPGs, ask for the rest.

Then there is WhatsApp, which is how a lot of files move in Kuwait. When you send an image as a normal photo, WhatsApp compresses it and strips transparency, so the PNG your designer sent arrives as a smaller, softer JPG on a white background. Forward that a few times and the logo degrades with each hop. Send logo files as documents, not photos, or better, share a link to a folder.

Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok will also compress what you upload, which is another reason to start from a large, clean PNG rather than a screenshot. And for profile pictures, remember they display inside a circle: use the stacked or icon version, with enough margin that nothing touches the edge.

Your logo's colours need to be written down in more than one system, because paper and screens make colour differently. CMYK values (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) are for printing on paper and card with ordinary presses. RGB values and their hex codes (the six-character code that starts with #) are for anything on a screen: website, app, Instagram, a digital menu.

A colour converted automatically between the two often shifts. A bright turquoise or a vivid orange on screen can print noticeably duller, because inks cannot reach every colour a screen can show. That is why a good designer picks and checks both values, rather than letting software convert. Pantone references are a third system, used when a colour has to match exactly across different materials, such as a bag, a box and a uniform, or for specialist printing.

Signage is its own case. Kuwait sign makers often work from acrylic, vinyl and paint ranges with their own colour references, and a lit sign changes how a colour reads at night. Give them your Pantone or CMYK reference, ask to see a physical sample, and look at it outdoors. The strong Kuwait sun will also fade some colours on a fascia over time, which is worth asking about before you approve a material.

All of this should appear on one page in your handover, next to the logo, so nobody has to guess. Choosing the colours themselves is a different question, covered in our guide to brand colours for the Kuwait market.

Printer (business cards, bags, stickers, letterheads): a vector PDF with CMYK colours, plus the Pantone reference if you have one. For boxes and labels the printer will also send a dieline, the flat template of the package, and want the artwork placed on it; that is a packaging job, described on our packaging design page.

Signage maker (fascias, light boxes, channel letters, window vinyl, often in Shuwaikh or the industrial areas): a vector file, usually PDF, AI or EPS, with Pantone or CMYK references and the one-colour version for anything cut or etched. Embroiderer (uniforms, caps): a vector file and the simplified or one-colour version; fine Arabic details and small dots may need thickening, and a good embroiderer will tell you.

Web developer or Shopify: SVG for the header and footer, a transparent PNG as a fallback, a square icon for the favicon, and your hex codes. App developer: the icon artwork as a vector, plus the exports each platform requires; app stores ask for a large square icon and the developer produces the rest. Social media and delivery apps: square and circular PNGs for the Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and WhatsApp Business profiles and the Talabat or Deliveroo listing, with the icon or stacked version centred and padded.

Trademark application: clean artwork of the mark in the form you want to register. Registration in Kuwait is handled by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and what they require is their decision; our guide to trademark registration in Kuwait explains the process.

You do not need design software to check a handover. Start with the zoom test: open the PDF or SVG (an SVG opens in any web browser) and zoom in as far as you can on a curve. If the edge stays smooth, it is vector. If it goes soft or turns into little squares, it is an image wearing a vector file's extension.

Next, the transparency test: open each PNG on a dark background, or drop it into a coloured slide. If a white box appears around the logo, it is not transparent. Then check the Arabic. If the logo contains Arabic text that was not converted to outlines, opening it on a computer without the same font, or in software with poor right-to-left support, can show the letters disconnected or in the wrong order. Ask the designer to confirm that all text in logo files is outlined.

Then look at completeness. Do you have every lockup you were shown, horizontal, stacked and icon, in full colour, one colour, white and black? Are the colour codes written down for print and screen? Is there a usage sheet that says how much space to leave around the logo and how small it can go? Are the files named so you can tell them apart, for example by language, lockup, colour and format, rather than final-final-2?

If anything is missing, ask now, while the project is fresh. A designer can export a missing version in minutes this month; a year from now the source file may be gone. Our logo design page lists exactly what our handover includes, if you want a reference to compare against.

Start by asking. Contact whoever designed the logo, or the printer who made your first sign or cards, and ask for the vector file. Printers often keep artwork from earlier jobs, and that is the cheapest rescue there is. Check old email attachments too; the AI or PDF may have been sent once and forgotten.

If the source is truly gone, the logo has to be redrawn as a vector. That is real design work, not a file conversion: automatic tracing tools produce lumpy curves and broken Arabic, which look acceptable on a phone and fall apart on a sign. A careful redraw rebuilds every curve and letter so the logo looks like itself, only clean. It is also the moment to fix small faults customers never noticed, such as a crowded Arabic join or a dot that disappears at small sizes, without changing what people recognise.

If the old logo was made from a template, or the Arabic was typed in with a default font, a redraw may raise bigger questions. Our honest guide to making your own logo covers how to tell whether a template is already in use by others, and our page on Arabic and bilingual logo design covers fixing an Arabic name that was never drawn.

Whatever you end up with, store the master files in two places that do not depend on one person: a shared drive and the business email, for example. Then send suppliers a link to that folder instead of forwarding images. If you would like us to rebuild or complete a logo file set, a short message through our contact page is enough to get a fixed quote.