Advice-Graphic File Quality

I just finished my own first website with Xara Web and a lot of help from the forum. I am having a logo done from a great graphics source for my business cards and stationery and website and I dont know what spec to ask for in terms of file type, resolution, etc. Could someone tell me the best types of files to request so I can utilize the logo in a number of different contexts, easily resize, etc. Also, do I need to ask for anything special in terms of "web safe colors" tho I have no clue what that means? Thanks a lot for your advice!

Usually your logo should be supplied ia jpg, png, png with alpha, ai & pdf, psd. I'd ask for output in 96 & 300 dpi 96 for web use and signatures (low res) 300 dpi for any print requirements. Full colour. CMYK or Spot colour for the high res stuff depending on what colours have been used. Web safe colours are a thing of the past when we only used 256 colours.

I know I am new here, could I recommend an EPS file of the logo, with a vector file you are not limited to size in any way. Please correct me if I am wrong.

This is a very large topic and there is no one answer to give you. With biz. cards you may want to use just one colour because it is cheaper to do than full colour. You just may want it to fit on a 95mm x 55mm sized card with all your info fitting inside the card so that there is less need to have an accurate trim (cut). You might want the card to have colour right out to the edge of the card, this is more expensive and take longer to set up because of the colour bleed (where it has to be cut). Many online printers prefer EPS files where your local printers prefer PDF files the reason for EPS is the way that it converts and renders the fonts used. If it was me who was preparing your biz. card I would always give it to you as a PDF the file size might be bigger as it gives the info on the fonts used and if the fonts used are not system fonts then a folder is made and the font is given with the PDF. If there was any bitmaps in your card (photo's) you could go as low as 150 dpi and sometimes even lower it all depends on the bitmap and png. would be the best format. I could go on and on here but what I would suggest is you Wiki or google some of the topics here that you don't understand and do a bit of research.

Thanks to all for the advice - it seems there are a lot of different opinions. The logo will be multi color and will not encompass a full business card. It will be placed on the card, with other type added. I appreciate your help!

It depends how they created your logo, and what you want to do with it.

If the logo is on a plain background on your business card which is the same colour as the background of your website, you could just ask for a PNG or JPEG version of your logo at 96dpi to be as wide as you want to use it on your website. You won't be able to amend or change it though.

I'd ask that they send you a PDF and the original file that they created for your business card in whichever program that might be - could be Illustrator, Photoshop or CorelDraw: you never know, they might even have created it in Xtreme.

Sometimes print shops get upset if you ask for that - they think you want the artwork they created for you so that you can get the printing done elsewhere, so maybe you need to ask just for the logo: isolating it in a new file that doesn't include the rest of your business card will take them longer but they may be happier with that.

Thanks Daniel- really appreciate it- the logo is being done by a graphics shop that knows it needs to provide any file type I desire- no issue there- the logo will be 2-3 colors on a white background with some text- The background on the website will not necessarily be white- and they'll give me multiple formats- so I want something that is easily resizeable for multiple uses. Ill definitely ask for the origianl corel /xara file whatever it is- really appreciate your advice! Thanks

As recommended, you need the logo in different formats for different uses. For print, if the logo is vector and not a bitmap, PDF at high resolution (300dpi +). For web, PNG True Color with Alpha transparency so you can use it on any color background. If the logo needs to be a bitmap, then PSD with layers, or TIFF and again at high resolution.

Higher resolution is good because you can always make the logo smaller but you cannot make the logo larger, especially if it is low resolution.

Thanks for all the addl info gary- really appreciate that-