Hi all, I've decided to try to make some freelance money at logo design. I'm talented in the design and visual area, but not in the technical and I still get a bit confused by the format stuff and how it applies to the open market.

I'm a little unusual in that I use Inkscape, and not Illustrator or Photoshop, both of which I find to be way too complex to facilitate fast creative work (for me, anyway). I can create a killer logo in Inkscape in the time it would take me to find my feet and perform a couple of basic functions in Illustrator (or Photoshop).

I know I need to be able to offer clients the final product in a vector format, so is .eps the one to use? It appears to be the only vector format Inkscape gives as a "Save As" format anyway (aside from its native .svg and the PDF option).

I was thinking of offering source files for an extra small charge (this appears to be commonly done on these "gigs" type sites), which for Inkscape is .svg, but if I deliver the main work product as .eps, isn't that a source file too in a sense? If a client or a future designer of theirs were to open the .eps file in Illustrator, would that enable them to work on the file in AI and thus negate the point of offering the .svg as the "source file" for an extra charge?

Maybe the whole idea of charging a little extra to provide the source files is stupid? (I see that many designers do this)

Thanks for any guidance.

Hi Rhizo,

I personally deliver all the work generated for the project. Clients hate being held hostage to a supplier.

I say "generated", because I may have resources (programs, libraries, footage, fonts) that I paid for, to use in my business. Clients are not entitled to my tools, just the deliverables they ask for me to create with the tools.

e.g. Stock photos... clients are entitled to my use of stock images I have paid for, they are not entitled to the use of the stock images in any other way.