Business Logo

Stu_Dent

Hey everyone,

As part of a new business im setting up, i have designed a logo to go with it.. The issue i have is that the logo i have designed has been hand drawn and im unsure as to how i get it transferred into a professional looking graphic, which i can use on business cards, my website etc?

are there programs you can use or do I have to go through some kind of company?

many thanks for your help,

Stu

CrustyMcMuffin

If you have a high quality scanner you could scan it onto your PC and then tidy it up using a package like the gimp. Alternatively you could use the gimp to recreate the logo from scratch if you're at all artistically gifted. The gimp is a free image manipulation software package.

Your other option would be to contact a web/graphic design company and see if they could sort something out for you.

ukbill69

Another great way is to get a graphics tablet, as you could sketch the image into your pc.

Stu_Dent

thank you for your suggestions..any more will be appreciated!

crompton

if your logo has colours on it, get a black and white drawing of it, scan it in and fill the colours in using the gimp and then tidy up etc.

tigergold

I use adobe photoshop to do graphics. Not sure if thiis is a popular program that people have on thier pc's.

oldrimes

You need to look at getting your logo in a 'vector graphics' format, rather than a 'bitmap graphics' format.

This will mean your logo will be completely scaleable - you can resize it and the quality of your logo will be maintained.

Bitmap graphics, are where the image is stored as a collection of bits - the following link is to wikipedia, where it is better described:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmap_graphics

Vector graphics are stored as mathematical shapes, whose combination creates the final image. This means they can be resized, with no jagged edges, or blockiness, which happens to bitmap graphics. Again a link to wikipedia, for a better description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics

Some packages can operate as either vector or bitmap graphics, but GIMP is (to the best of my knowledge) a bitmap graphics package.

If you want a vector based package - you need to look at something like Inkscape for example (free software), but there are also others, and there are plenty tutorials available.
Link to inkscape: https://www.inkscape.org

I have seen some programs that claim to convert bitmap graphics to vector based graphics, but I have never used them, so can't comment on quality of the final result.

Vector graphics packages can take a little more work to get used to, but for something like a logo, where you may want to use it at a range of different sizes - the vector graphics will avoid a lot of problems.

Hope the above description is clear. It can be confusing when you first encounter these graphic formats - and because you view everything through a bitmap device (computer screen), you can always see little jagged edges on graphics, but the important thing is that you can rescale vector graphics with no loss of quality.

Stu_Dent

oldrimes wrote: »

You need to look at getting your logo in a 'vector graphics' format, rather than a 'bitmap graphics' format.

This will mean your logo will be completely scaleable - you can resize it and the quality of your logo will be maintained.

Bitmap graphics, are where the image is stored as a collection of bits - the following link is to wikipedia, where it is better described:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmap_graphics

Vector graphics are stored as mathematical shapes, whose combination creates the final image. This means they can be resized, with no jagged edges, or blockiness, which happens to bitmap graphics. Again a link to wikipedia, for a better description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics

Some packages can operate as either vector or bitmap graphics, but GIMP is (to the best of my knowledge) a bitmap graphics package.

If you want a vector based package - you need to look at something like Inkscape for example (free software), but there are also others, and there are plenty tutorials available.
Link to inkscape: https://www.inkscape.org

I have seen some programs that claim to convert bitmap graphics to vector based graphics, but I have never used them, so can't comment on quality of the final result.

Vector graphics packages can take a little more work to get used to, but for something like a logo, where you may want to use it at a range of different sizes - the vector graphics will avoid a lot of problems.

Hope the above description is clear. It can be confusing when you first encounter these graphic formats - and because you view everything through a bitmap device (computer screen), you can always see little jagged edges on graphics, but the important thing is that you can rescale vector graphics with no loss of quality.

Thats some brilliant information thank you for taking the time to write it out!

Out of curiosity do you know any programs that change bitmap images to vector ones?

Im going to give the inkscape program a go!

thanks again to you and everyone for their help and once again if anyone has anything to add please feel free!

Stu:)

oldrimes

Glad the information was helpful.

If your logo isn't too complicated, then it may be straight forward to recreate in Inkscape, but its worthwhile working through one of their tutorials first. People often get a bit frustrated with vector graphics, especially when they are used to working with bitmap graphics, but once you get to grips with vector graphics, its very powerful, and fast to produce logos.

I've just noticed that Inkscape has some capability of converting from bitmap to vector, and have a tutorial that deals with it.

When you install Inkscape - look at the help menu:
Help --> Tutorials --> Inkscape: Tracing

Wikipedia has a list of raster to vector conversion tools:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_raster_to_vector_conversion_software

and also a comparison of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_raster_to_vector_conversion_software

Stu_Dent

oldrimes wrote: »

Glad the information was helpful.

If your logo isn't too complicated, then it may be straight forward to recreate in Inkscape, but its worthwhile working through one of their tutorials first. People often get a bit frustrated with vector graphics, especially when they are used to working with bitmap graphics, but once you get to grips with vector graphics, its very powerful, and fast to produce logos.

I've just noticed that Inkscape has some capability of converting from bitmap to vector, and have a tutorial that deals with it.

When you install Inkscape - look at the help menu:
Help --> Tutorials --> Inkscape: Tracing

Wikipedia has a list of raster to vector conversion tools:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_raster_to_vector_conversion_software

and also a comparison of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_raster_to_vector_conversion_software

thanks again oldrimes its very much appreciated:)