Hi, we're creating master logo files for an international corporation that will be used by many different end-users, most of who should be design/production professionals. It will be accompanied by a style guide outlining proper usage, etc.
The logos are 100% vector, and in years past we would save them out as EPS files. But we understand that is a bit antiquated and limited (this article is one of better out of many). So we want to save all master files as PDFs, but we want to make sure we are using the best possible settings to keep quality and color-compliance at it's highest, while also being as compatible as possible.
LOGO SPECS:
- As mentioned, the logo files are 100% vector, but are using some pretty advanced gradient meshes in Illustrator to simulate a 'metallic' emblem. We've made it grayscale (only K channel in CMYK). The smoothness needs to be retained.
- They also may have a couple small inner/outer glows, which we understand may be rasterized in the conversion. We've set the Document Raster settings pretty high to account for this.
- They need to retain transparent backgrounds so they will work on any background color.
- We have created RGB (using sRGB profile), CMYK (not color managed) and spot PMS versions.
QUESTIONS:
1) First, keeping in mind what's important (complex gradients, transparent backgrounds, etc), what PDF version should we use (e.g., 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, etc) that would keep quality high but be as compatible as possible with possible slightly outdated software?
2) Are we right to only embed color profiles on the RGB versions? We don't want the CMYK or PMS numbers to change at all, and we have no way of knowing final output intent.
3) Any other settings or tips we should know as we make these files (there will be 30+ final files when complete)? We really need to do this right.
Thanks for any help or tips! Let us know if there's anywhere else we may want to look for more specific details.