Vector Logos of popular brands are sometimes hard to find for your designs…
Customers in need of design services are usually not knowledgeable of technical properties of design… that’s why they hire us to design it for them. More often then not, customer supplied files are not print-ready; product images and manufacturer logos pulled off of the internet, content written on a napkin, and anything else they can think of to make your job harder, but that’s why we charge by the hour, right?
Efficiency Saves Time and Money
A good portion of design time is used in searching the internet for brand logos or finding product images that are suitable for printing. It is a burdensome task and takes time and patience. 
As an honest designer or design company, it is extremely important to be efficient while producing quality design. Your efficiency allows you to work faster and to be more precise, which in turn saves your customers money on design time and at the same time also helps produce quality design quickly so that you can move on to the next project.
Finding Vector Logos of Popular Brands can be Easy
(Make sure to abide by the original copyright policies before downloading or using any corporate logos and not to infringe any copyright laws or terms of use)
- Brands of the World – the largest library of freely downloadable vector logos
- FreeLogoVector – Vector Logo Download and Share
When You Can’t Find the Vector Logo You’re Looking For
on any of these sites, another option is to search directly for the logo which might be found in press releases or manuals typically found in PDF format. The easiest way to find PDF files is through Google’s Advanced Search option and choosing PDF in the file type field or by typing directly into the search bar like this: 
Search: Netflix Logo filetype:pdf
At the time of writing this post, Google’s #1 search engine result renders a link to a Netflix API naming & Logo Guide PDF which contains a vector Netflix® Logo which can be extracted from the PDF by opening it in Adobe Illustrator. I like to use the brand name and the word logo to get a bit more specific search results. Sometimes it does not work so you must be a bit vague and use less specificity:
Search: Netflix filetype:pdf
Finding High Resolution Images of Commercial Products
(Make sure to abide by the original copyright policies before downloading or using any corporate/commercial images and not to infringe any copyright laws or terms of use) 
Now that you understand how to find vector logos in PDF, you can apply the same concept to finding high resolution images of commercial products that might not be easily found in print-ready format (large, 300dpi).
Search: Samsung Prevail filetype:pdf
At the time of writing this post, Yahoo’s #1 search engine result renders a link to a Boost Mobile Samsung Galaxy Prevai™ spec sheet that contains a high resolution image of the phone.
The Key is to be Resourceful
Another option to find high resolution product images is to begin by searching the company website for a Media section or search within the Site Map. Many corporations offer high resolution product images right on their websites for resellers and/or the media to use on their websites or print material. Corporations know that keeping consistent is smart business. Given this is the easiest and most convenient way of finding product images, not all corporate websites are created the same. Sometimes a high resolution image is simply not available online, at least not easily and you can’t spend hours upon hours finding one image.
Sometimes You Just Have to Make it Work
This option is a bit more time consuming but when your design quality matters to you and your client, then it is time well spent: Search the top three search engines for the product you are in need of and make sure to go to the “Images” section of each search engine. Many people and businesses take their own pictures of products with high megapixel cameras that render print-worthy images. Using Photoshop you can take the product right out of the picture and use it in your design. Make sure that your image is in CMYK format to avoid any color surprises when it prints. Adobe Illustrator and InDesign will accept RGB images to be placed within a CMYK document, but the document as a whole will be converted to CMYK at your printer. All brands and company names used here are copyright of their respectful owners.
What cool tips or tricks do you use to find product images or logos when you don’t have them?
Please share with other graphic designers by posting your comments below…
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