How to provide usable brand assets to your Digital Agency
Our clients often ask us for insights into how they should provide us with the assets we need to create the website or digital marketing campaign they want, so we put this short article together to help!
PHOTOS
File Format
.JPG is the most common file format for photos, and is our recommendation in most cases for use digitally. Just make sure they are saved at high quality and not too compressed. If they look blurry or you can see artefacts in them, they’re too compressed and we’ll need to source the originals from the source (i.e. your photographer or stock library).
Sometimes, if photos have come directly from a professional photographer, they may be supplied as .TIF files, which are also suitable. Photographers work with uncompressed .RAW files but rarely if ever provide these to their clients, so it’s unlikely that you’ll have them, but if you do, these would also be fine.
What we definitely don’t want here are .GIF files. .PNG would be acceptable if that’s what you have.
FILE Size (MB)
Filesize in terms of MB is not relevant, as photos are not usually excessive in terms of filesize. In general, any filesize is fine, the higher the better.
Just be aware that most email providers including Google Gmail and Microsoft Office 365 do not allow for emails to be sent that exceed 25mb, so you’ll need to use a free service like Wesendit, Dropbox or Google Drive to transfer files larger than this.
Don’t send multiple emails with one huge image per email – use one of the previously mentioned file transfer services to send them all at once to ensure that nothing gets missed.
What we don’t want in terms of filesize are images that are less than 50kb-100kb or less. These are more than likely too small or compressed.
Dimensions (Pixels)
For digital, it’s not necessary to get super high-resolution photos (these may be required for print campaigns or outdoor billboards). Usually, we work to about 2000 pixel width maximum for photos. This is enough for use across websites and digital marketing campaigns as long as the quality of that image is very high.
That being said, the higher resolution the better. We would ideally want images at the highest resolution you have available, even if they’re 5000+ pixels wide, as we can always reduce them to the dimensions we need, but we can’t increase them.
In general, we don’t want photos that are less than 1000px in width.
GRAPHICS, Logos & ILLUSTRATIONS
File Format
These assets could include your company logo, brand style guide, digital illustrations or icons. The critical point here is that they are vector-based, not pixel-based. Unlike photos, vector graphics need to be infinitely scalable for the best quality.
The easiest way to tell if your graphic is vector-based is by clicking to zoom in on it multiple times. Does it start to get blurry? If so, it’s not a vector, so it’s not ideal. Vector images will remain perfectly crisp and sharp as many times as you zoom in.
Our recommended formats for these file types are .AI, .PDF, .EPS or .SVG. We can work with any of these files and don’t have a preference.
.PNG or .GIF files would also potentially be viable here, as long as they are at our recommended resolution (see below).
One thing to be wary of is to ensure that the designer that created these assets has outlined the fonts, otherwise when we open them, the fonts will not work. We’ll then need to either track down the font file or get the assets resupplied by the original designer. 9 times out of 10 they’re outlined, but it’s something to confirm. This may be hard for you to check unless you have the design software required to open these kinds of files, so best to just send them and no doubt your agency will quickly let you know if there’s a problem.
What we don’t want here are low resolution .JPG files. For example, a small (2000px) blurry .JPG file of your company logo is not suitable.
FILE Size (MB)
If they’re vector, assets will not be large in terms of file size, so in this case, don’t be worried if they’re less than 100KB, as long as they’re vector, they’ll be ideal for working with.
If all you have is pixel-based assets, the same applies here as what’s in the Photos section above. The higher, the better.
Dimensions (Pixels)
As vector files are infinitely scalable, dimensions in terms of pixels are not relevant. Even if your logo was 1mm wide, if it’s vector-based, we can scale it up to be the size of a billboard without a problem.
If you only have .PNG or .GIF files, the higher the better, but 2000 pixel minimum width is a good guide.
VIDEOS
File Format
Typically videos might be supplied in .MP4 or .MOV format. Almost any format should be fine if supplied by a reputable videographer.
File Size (MB)
Generally send us the highest quality video file that you have, as we’ll have more options to do with it what we need. This may be several GB in size (2000+ MB), which is fine.
Dimensions (Pixels)
4K would be ideal, which is approximately 4000 pixels wide. It may be the case that you only have 1080px, if so, we can still work with this. If your videographer shot the video in a higher resolution, it may be worth asking for a 4K export for your asset library.
Length
Any length is fine, from 10 seconds to 2 hours+.
In terms of how we might use videos online, if they’re very long (over 1 minute) and need to be shown in their entirety, we’ll likely be suggesting that we create a company Youtube and Vimeo channel if you don’t already have one, and we’ll upload them there. Once uploaded to one of those platforms, we can embed them on your website, or link to them as necessary, saving your hosting server the bandwidth and resource usage, with the added advantage of being found directly on those platforms.
SOUND RECORDINGS
File Format
.WAV, .MP3, .AIFF, .FLAC, .BWF are all fine, again, it’s about the quality of the audio.
File Size (MB)
Any size in terms of MB is fine, the higher the better.
Length
Any length is fine.
That’s it! You’re fully trained in our recommended digital file sizes, types and lengths. All the best with a smooth and seamless supply of assets to your Digital Agency!
If you haven’t already, why don’t you start a project with us so you can have the excitement of putting your new skills to use! 😂