How to check a logo before printing it

24 September 2026 · Pathside guides

Pathside opens .ai, .eps, .svg and PDF on the phone →

1. Zoom until the edges tell you something

At page size everything looks fine. Zoom to three or four times and you can see whether curves are smooth, whether two shapes actually meet, and whether a hairline rule is there at all. If zooming turns the artwork into soft blocks, you are not looking at the vector — you are looking at a picture of it, and you cannot judge anything from that.

2. Check which artboard you are approving

Brand files usually hold the logo several ways: full colour, single colour, reversed for dark backgrounds, stacked, horizontal, and an icon on its own. Approving "the logo" when the file has six is how the wrong lockup ends up on a thousand printed bags. Step through every artboard before you answer.

3. Look for white artwork on transparency

A reversed logo is white, with nothing behind it. On a white page it looks like an empty file. A viewer that shows transparency as a checkerboard makes this visible at a glance; without one, people report a broken file that is perfectly correct.

4. Read the text, letter by letter

The single most expensive print error is a spelling mistake in a name, a phone number or a URL, and it survives every check that is not someone reading it slowly. Zoom in and read the actual characters. Check the domain. Check the phone number digit by digit.

5. Make sure you have the file, not an image of it

If all you have received is a PNG or a screenshot, you cannot send that to a printer for anything large. Ask for the vector: .ai, .pdf or .svg. A printer can scale those to a building; they cannot rescue a 600-pixel PNG.

What you cannot judge on a phone

Colour. A phone screen is not calibrated, it is probably in a colour-shifting display mode, and printed ink does not match emitted light anyway. If the exact colour matters, ask for the ink or Pantone references in writing and, for a big run, ask the printer for a proof.

Check the file you were sent is the file they will print

Approving a PNG someone pasted into an email, and then assuming the printer got the good version, is a common and expensive gap. Ask which file is going to the press, and look at that one. If the answer is "the one in the email", that is worth a conversation before the run.

Ask about bleed and outlined text

Two questions cover most print rejections. Does the artwork have bleed — a few millimetres of extra colour past the trim line, so a slight misalignment does not leave a white edge? And is the text outlined, so the printer's machine does not substitute a font it lacks? You do not need to fix either; you need to have asked, because both are cheap now and expensive after the run.

Look at it small

Most checking instincts are to zoom in, but plenty of failures only show up at the finished size. Hold the phone at arm's length, or shrink the artwork on screen until it is the size it will be on the item, and see whether the fine text still reads and the mark still holds together. A logo designed on a 27-inch screen often has detail that vanishes on a pen.

Write your approval down

Reply naming the exact file — "approved: acme-logo-horizontal-reversed.ai, artboard 3" — rather than "looks good". It takes the same time, and it is the only thing that settles what was agreed if the wrong version appears on a thousand printed items.