What is included with my logo package? (back to top)

Fargo has several logo packages to choose from or we can customize one to fit your needs. All logo packages include your final logo in a variety of formats including the "vector" version. This is our actual working file. Once your logo has been paid for, it belongs to you! We have packages that include business card design, letterhead and envelope design and we can also set your items up in Microsoft Word of Publisher so that you can print items from your desktop printer as needed

What is the difference between RGB & CMYK? (back to top)

Monitor colors or colors on paper are complicated. Monitors use tiny LEDs that light up while printing uses various colors of inks.  To reproduce the wide range of colors, most technologies use the three primary colors, Red, Green & Blue (RGB) or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK) that are positioned very close to each other so that the eye mixes the colors together into one.  However, different media has different requirements. RGB is used mainly in displays while CMYK is used in printing.

RGB is an additive color mode because the background of a monitor or screen is black. The individual LEDs light up in varying intensity adding light to black. The variations in intensity of each color determine what color the user sees. CMYK is subtractive because the paper where it’s printed on is white and the ink subtracts from the brightness of the white paper.

What is the difference between a "vector" and a "bitmap" image? (back to top)

It can be broken down like this:  A vector format image is a drawing. A bitmap format image is a photo.

When you draw something, you draw lines, make them different thicknesses, and then color them in.  When you shoot a photo, you expose a piece of film to light, and millions of tiny grains on the film register the light, creating a grid of dots that are so close together, it looks like a photo instead of a bunch of dots.

Formats like .gif and .jpg are bitmap formats. That means that they’re basically using different organizing and compressing methods to store a grid of colored dots. But vector

There are advantages to each. Vector formats can generally be stretched to various sizes without losing quality, but they’re terrible for photos because even a small 100 x 100 thumbnail photo has 10,000 dots in it. If you tried to define each dot as a colored circle or square, you’d get a really huge file that took forever to turn from that set of instructions back into a picture.

Bitmap formats are really easy to use for photos and are fast to display because your monitor is already just a grid of colored dots, so to display them, you’re just changing the color of the dots that are already there. But if you try to stretch a bitmap, you just make all those dots in the photo bigger than the dots on your screen and the photos get fuzzy and blotchy.

If you’re going to use a vector image on a web site, you generally need to convert it to a bitmap image, because web browsers handle bitmap images much better. On the other hand, you have a lot more freedom in terms of the final size of that image, because you’re starting from something that’s easier to stretch.

So in short:

Vector Format: Great for drawings, bad for photos, bad for the web, easy to stretch, easy to convert to bitmap.

Bitmap Format: Okay for drawings, great for photos, best for the web, hard to stretch, hard to convert to vector.

Why should I pay for a professional logo when there are so many $99 specials online? (back to top)

The easy answer is that you get what you pay for. By the same token, more expensive does not always mean it’s a better logo. It does not have to be one extreme or the other but a medium sized professional company, like Fargo can offer you an affordable package that will look far better than an online logo site and will not cost as much as a high-end Ad agency.

Cheap online sites often use clipart or re-use icons and design elements. These companies do NOT take the time to understand your business, your demographic or who you are selling to. Professional designers like Fargo have multiple awards in logo design to back up the "unique factor". While awards don’t guarantee every logo will be an award winner, it is a guarantee that we take the time before the pencil hits the paper to do a lot of market research that will guarantee your logo will greatly improve your business presence and appeal to your customers/clients.

When you purchase a logo through a service that just lets you browse through a collection of pre-designed logos, you won’t be getting a unique identifier. It’s still relatively rare to run into someone who has bought the same logo as you have — but it happens. And as more businesses purchase logos from these sites, the likelihood of encountering someone in your city using the same logo is going up.

When considering your logo design options, taking a look at what professional graphic designers can offer you are a good starting point. There’s no cost for browsing through designers’ portfolios and seeing what they’ve been able to do for other companies. You’ll notice some key differences if you compare a professionals portfolio to the offerings of a logo service. One crucial difference is that many professionals incorporate the name of the business that they’re developing a logo for, as opposed to logo services, which tend to simply print the name below the logo — after all, if the name is closely tied into the logo as a whole, it’s harder to swap in a different business name when it comes time to resell a logo.

You may also see that many professional designers will go a step beyond designing just a logo for your business. You can get a complete identity for your business — a logo that matches your website, which in turn matches your business card. While you can purchase a logo and put it on a business card or a website, you’ll likely find that they don’t quite seem to go together. Even little things, like not having access to the font that was used in your logo, can make it difficult to present your business with a cohesive image.

In the end, the upfront cost of working with a professional is more than purchasing a logo from an online service. But a unique logo is more valuable in the long run, as your customers associate that logo with your business, and your business alone, you’ll see both increased interest and increased loyalty. You’ll get a return on the investment you made in your company’s brand.

Do you offer RUSH services? (back to top)

Absolutely. While the cost may increase depending on your delivery needs, Fargo understands that "emergencies" happen. You can often find us working late hours or on weekends to try and help our desperate clients anyway we can!

Do you offer Printing? (back to top)

While we do not print here in our studio, Fargo has discounted arrangements with many local printers as well as vendor accounts for less expensive online vendors. We charge a small service fee for the leg work but do not mark up our vendor’s prices.

What "support services" do you offer? (back to top)

Fargo is a One-Stop-Shop. We can provide custom photography, stock photography, creative writing, proof reading, photo retouching, small run silk screening, character development and branding strategy advice. Just ask, we are a really creative bunch! If we don’t specialize in it, we have an amazing list of vendors, subcontractors and resources that can.