While a majority of our flash logo animation projects involve logos that we’ve designed at the shop, we also do quite a bit of animation using logos that we didn’t design. We work with quite a few video production houses, as well as one-one-one with clients who have had their logo created somewhere else. Most of the time there’s no issue with using outside material, but once in a while – wow – I’m amazed at what passes off for file prep these days. Working on a flash logo movie for a client (no, I won’t say) who had their logo designed by a logo design company they found on the interpipes (won’t tell you who, but they are in the top 5 Google results if you’re searching for the words logo and design). When we got our mitts on the .EPS files, I was floored at just how badly they were set up.
As the client had only viewed pixel based artworkand didn’t have their own copy of vector based software, to them the logo looks all fine and dandy. Above is what they see when they take delivery of the files from their handy dandly online logo design firm (I’ve close-cropped the design to save anyone the embarassment). Ah, but when we’re importing the artwork into Flash (or anything else for that matter) we’re going to use the vector version. And here’s what that looks like when we toggle off preview mode in Illustrator. Yikes. All these intersecting lines, maniacal miter corners and overlaps just to create an outline around a font?
Makes me wonder if these cats even prep files before shipping digital to unsuspecting clients. This artwork will cause nothing but problems when it comes to any type of digital output, and I can only imagine what would happen if this file ever found them itself becoming acquainted with a vinyl plotter knife blade.
For what it’s worth, here’s what the file should look like once all the vectors have been cleaned up. This file is smaller in size, easier to edit and an be imported into any digital program without fear. The pathfinder operation in Illustrator is fantastic and all for outlines, but ya gotta clean up the auto-acked vectors once it’s finished doing its thing.
While we’re at it – don’t designers close vector shapes any more? I know someone who calls themselves a design firm that doesn’t. The artwork we’re talking about was fairly complicated to begin with (complete with blends and gradient fills) and these incomplete vector objects (circled) serve only to make matters worse. Much worse. Took me a couple of hours to re-do the artwork before I was able to import it into Flash for composition. I pity clients who take delivery of these file formats, without any idea of the headaches – and expense – they’re going to run into down the road when it comes to using their spiffy new logo. Sorry for the Thursday afternoon rant, but butchered art files and logo formats are a pet peeve.
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Tags: how to, illustrator, rants, tips
I just found this website, and I’ve seen this issue too often. For a few years I had to work in Corel Draw (my old Art Director didn’t know Illustrator, so we weren’t allowed to switch.) As much as Corel Draw sucked, it did force me to learn some good habits. Corel Draw doesn’t fill open paths and because our art was eventually turned into embroidery, we couldn’t have any overlapping shapes.
These days, the last thing I do before handing off a logo is make sure that everything is cleaned up.
Keep up the informative posts.
[...] set-up. When inexperienced designers create logos in illustrator, they tend to go vector happy (see Bad Designer – No Donut for more). Designers who know what they’re doing spend a lot of time cleaning up messy [...]
Great post!
It is true, I think some designers are just lazy or they don’t know any better. I have been using Ai for many years and it boils down to your work ethic. Once a “design” is complete, that does not necessarily mean you are done.
For example, say you paint a room in your house, once the walls are painted and looking nice in the new color, are you done? No. You still have to put away the drip cloths, wash out the brushes, and store/dispose the paint cans!
Keep this stuff coming…and I love the article about winning a logo design contest.
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[...] a little time making sure that the artwork files were set up correctly in Illustrator (below) – something which many designers neglect to do, and something (while we’re being honest) that I had been less than proficient with when I [...]
[...] This post was Twitted by jeffandrews [...]
I HATE vector shapes that aren’t completely closed up, why wouldn’t
you finish a shape but leave the ends so close together that you have to zoom in by a billion% to fix them. It’s just laziness and there’s no excuse *End of rant*