As a business owner, you’re likely already aware of a killer logo design’s impact on your brand. You already know that your logo is the face of your business and the first image that most people are likely to call to mind when asked about your brand.
Here’s the thing, while most people recognize that they need to put a lot of thought into the design of their logo, the colors, the font, and the size, few consider the importance of the formatting. This common rookie mistake often leaves brands struggling with a logo that doesn’t quite meet all of their design needs.
So, how do you avoid this logo mishap or correct it if you have already found yourself stuck with a “less-than-ideal” logo design? Vector logo designs are the answer. Let’s explore the advantages of a vector logo, why your business needs a vector logo, and how you may even be able to vectorize your existing design.
What Is A Vector Logo Design?
So, what is a vector logo design? Essentially, a vector logo is a special type of file formatting that saves the logo design as a set of points, lines, curves, and shapes. By saving a design as its basic elements, it adds near-infinite flexibility to the design, allowing the logo design to be more easily altered or scaled up and down without distorting the integrity of the design itself.
A vector logo design will give you the ultimate creative control over your logo and help you get the most mileage out of it too. As your business evolves, you are likely to encounter more and more opportunities to use your logo on packaging, posters, or even in video or animated content. A vector logo design will allow you to easily incorporate your logo into every new design need.
The Difference Between A Raster Logo & A Vector Logo
Where vector logo designs are created from a variety of points, lines, curves, and shapes, raster logo designs are created using small individual squares known as pixels. These small squares look great at their original size or smaller, however, as the design is scaled up, the square pixels become distorted, giving the finished logo design a stretched and blurry appearance.
The square shape of the individual pixels can make design changes more difficult as well. Small detail changes that compromise the integrity of a pixel can lead to unintended complications when trying to change even the smallest details on a raster-style design.
The Key Benefits Of Using A Vector Logo Design For Your Business
While raster designs have their place, there are several distinct advantages to choosing a vector logo design for your business instead.
Consistently High Resolution
Because vector designs are crafted from points, lines, and curves, they are far more precise and detailed than pixel-based raster images. This means that a vector image will maintain its high-resolution detail no matter how close you zoom in on the image or how far you zoom out.
Near-Infinite Scalability
The consistent high-resolution means that a vector logo design offers near-infinite scalability. Your vector logo design will look amazing as a miniaturized icon, and it will look just as awesome plastered across a billboard.
Smaller File Size
The digital formatting of most vector files makes for a much lighter, smaller file size than traditional pixel-based raster images. A smaller file size can make all the difference between having all of your images visible or being forced to go with low-quality images to conserve space or adhere to maximum file-size restrictions.
Greater Artistic Freedom
Vector images are created in a more intuitive and natural way that is far closer to true “drawing” than the manipulation of square pixels that takes place in raster image creation. This gives the artist the ability to exercise a far greater degree of artistic freedom and allows their natural artistic talent to flow onto the screen just as if they were drawing with a pencil or pen and ink on paper.
This highly-intuitive creation style lets the artist craft logos using both basic and complex shapes, from delicately curved lines to geometric shapes like stars, cones, cylinders, and more. Vector design software gives artists the ability to manipulate logo typography as well. Individual letters can be enhanced with added decoration, or entire words can be tilted, curved, or scaled up or down in size. Logo designers can use a wide array of brushes and filters to create color gradients and realistic textures and apply these effects to the entire logo design or to just one or two specific elements.
What’s more, these capabilities aren’t limited to the creation and editing of vector designs. In many cases, skilled designers are able to use vector drawing programs to edit, correct, and improve pixel-based raster images to some degree as well.
Ability To Animate
Many varieties of vector images can be animated using simple frame-by-frame animation techniques. SVG and Flash files allow for simple animation. The artist simply creates a series of vector images making small transformations on each image. Those images can then be stitched together in a series to form a short animation. It’s the ability to make minute changes to vector design without distorting the original image that makes this animation possible. The ability to easily animate vector logo designs opens up a world of possibilities for creating animated ads or videos promoting your brand.
Interactive Images
Similar to the ability to animate vector designs, talented artists can also use vector design programs to create interactive logo designs. These images can be used to transform the logo or present a different image altogether in response to some action taken by the viewer. The ability to create interactive designs gives your business website a cutting-edge look and feel.
Codable
Because the majority of vector file formats are text-based rather than image-based, they are able to be read and manipulated by both humans and machines. One of the most common vector file formats, the Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) file, is based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML) formatting, which is a coding language similar to HTML, designed to be readable by both humans and computers for easy programming.
The ability to write code using vector files creates the possibility to code logos and images into the business website, create modern interactions, and perform fun actions like having your logo appear when a visitor clicks a specific button or hovers over an area of a digital media post or advertisement.
The Secret To Great Vector Logo Design
So, now that we have covered the many advantages of using a vector design for your brand logo, how exactly do you go about getting a great vector logo? Or, if you currently have a raster logo design, how do you convert it to a vectorized logo? There are several options available to you, depending on your skill level and budget.
If you have a passing ability to understand the ins and courts of using design software programs and some artistic ability, specifically the ability to create digital art, you may be able to transform your existing logo design into a vectorized logo by using the design trace function built into popular vector-based design programs like Adobe Illustrator. The caveat to this is the learning curve to master even the most basic functions of these complex design programs is often pretty steep. For those with no significant digital art creation background, these programs are likely to produce more frustration than anything else.
The majority of the powerful vector design programs are also a bit on the pricey side, meaning that the cost of the software is likely to be impractical if it will only be used to create one or two logo designs.
That brings us to the next option. Most brands will find that paying a designer to create a new vector logo design or vectorize an existing logo is the most cost-effective solution and produces the best results. Of course, now you will need to decide who you should tap to create or transform your design. Large companies and brands generally have the expansive budgets needed to retain a professional design agency or in-house creative team. This is generally not a feasible option for smaller brands, startups, and solo entrepreneurs.
Freelance marketplaces offer access to a huge array of artists who advertise the ability to create vector logo designs or vectorize existing logos. This can be an affordable option for those with smaller budgets. That being said, there are a few caveats to be wary of when using an artist selected through a freelance marketplace.
For starters, these marketplaces attract a massive variety of artists from all over the world. There is little to no vetting performed on the individual artists and very little opportunity for recompense if your artist fails to deliver the logo design quality you were looking for.
Revisions are typically limited on these platforms as well, with most offering one or two revisions free (at best) before requiring that you finalize and pay for the design, regardless of whether you are completely satisfied or not. This can be a big disappointment and can quickly blow up your budget as you will need to pay another artist to correct a faulty design.
Most find that an unlimited creative service like Flocksy offers the best bang for the buck and provides the best guarantee of getting an awesome vector logo design that you will love.
Let’s take a look at the many advantages of choosing Flocksy as your unlimited creative design partner.
The Power Of A Flocksy Subscription For Logo Design & More
An unlimited creative services subscription with Flocksy will allow you to create as many vector logo designs as you like. Do you have an existing raster logo design that you love? Flocksy’s talented designers can easily vectorize your existing logo to allow you to continue to use your established design in a wide range of new applications without sacrificing quality.
The true beauty of Flocksy’s unlimited creative monthly subscriptions is the fact that you are not limited to logo design editing or creation. Your flat-rate monthly subscription includes all the creative design services a growing brand needs. Flocksy’s talented creatives can help you design a killer business website, create the graphics you need for your digital marketing and social media campaigns, write regular blog posts and enticing product descriptions, create video campaigns, and so much more.
You will work with a team of vetted creatives who have the talent and experience to deliver top-notch results, generally in 24 to 48 hours or less. Revisions are always free, and your creative will work with you to revise your design until it is perfect. Best of all, you get all of this for one flat monthly rate. No contracts and no hidden fees.
Getting A Vector Logo Design From Flocksy
Flocksy’s user-friendly platform and intuitive design briefs make getting a top-quality vector logo design simple and frustration-free, even for those with no tech skills or formatting knowledge. Simply log in to your Flocksy account and click “Create new project”. Navigate to the graphic design project category and choose “Vectorize a logo.”
The easy-to-follow project brief will walk through the process of requesting a new vectorized logo design or vectorizing an existing logo design. Our unique brand buckets let you upload all of your branding guidelines, colors, and fonts at one time and use these assets over and over for all of your brand-related projects.
You will also be asked to provide a brief description of the style of logo you are looking for, or you can simply upload your existing logo design and have the team vectorize it for you. Once you have provided all of the key details, your creative will get to work creating your vectorized logo design. There is nothing left to do but sit back and wait to be impressed. You should have your results in 24 to 48 hours. It’s that simple.
Let Flocksy level up your logo design now!