You can add your company's logo to Hydrogen Cards. The great part of Hydrogen is that you don't have to order thousands of cards to meet minimums, or go back and forth with vendors on card proofs. We provide an interactive card design editor, so you can see your cards before they print. If you make a mistake, it won't cost you anything! You can print as little as 1 card.
Best Practices
Before we examine the requirements for the logo, we will first look at industry best practices:
- Make your logo very high resolution
- Try not to have any background colors, boxes, or other fills in your logo
- No profanity or controversial images in your logo
- Use your company's name in the logo, versus a brand mark
If you are unsure if your logo meets industry best practices, please compare your logo to the logo printed on the cards of Chime, Revolut, Dave, Current, Greenlight, and other popular cards apps. They print millions of cards every year!
Logo Requirements
It is important that you closely follow the directions in this article when preparing your logo for upload into the Hydrogen Cards design editor.
1. File Format
Your logo MUST be uploaded as an SVG file.
We will not accept PNG, JPG, or PDF file formats. This is to ensure a clean and crisp printing of the logo onto the cards.
Please make sure your SVG file does not contain any text layers. You can learn more about how to convert a text layer into an outline vector in the "Preparing Your Logo" section below.
2. Image Size
The optimal logo dimensions for Hydrogen Cards are 200px wide by 50px tall.
Please note, your logo file may not pull in exactly to spec on the Card Design page of our portal. To ensure the highest quality printing, our customer success team manually reviews all logo submissions before they are sent for printing.
3. Maximum File Size
Please refrain from uploading an SVG file larger than 3MB.
4. Color Contrast and Card Background Pairing
To ensure proper readability of your logo, please make sure your logo's primary color pops against your chosen card background color. We recommend using a light logo color on a dark card background, or a dark logo color on a light card background, as shown below.
Preparing Your Logo
The only image format that will be accepted is SVG, but what is an SVG file?
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) are vector graphics; this means that they can be scaled to any resolution. Vector files have mathematically precise points, meaning that the image retains its quality and resolution as it is scaled up and down in dimensions.
Please follow these steps to ensure the best results when the SVG is printed on your cards:
1. Make sure your logo is saved under the SVG format
The format of a file is generally located at the end of the file name after the period. If your file does not display its format, right-click on it and click Information. Find out if the file name ends with .svg. If not, you can check with your designer or marketing team to provide you with an SVG version of your logo.
2. Ensure that the logo's background is transparent
For better results and readability, we strongly recommend that the background of your logo is transparent.
3. Verify that you do not have any text layers within your logo's file
It is very important that your logo's file doesn't contain any text layers. Please make sure they are converted to vector paths. These paths can be scaled infinitely without any loss of image quality. This means your logo will appear smooth and crisp on the front of your cards. Also, it allows us to open the file, and print your logo correctly, without needing the actual font used.
A logo uploaded with text layer(s) inside won’t be accepted by Hydrogen and will slow down the card ordering process!
Note: Once text is outlined, it can no longer be changed / edited.
To convert any text layers into vector assets in your SVG logotype, here are a few software options and solutions:
- Adobe Illustrator (preferred)
- Adobe Photoshop
- Sketch
- Figma (free)
Upload Your Logo
If you are a new user to Hydrogen Cards, you can upload your logo on your admin portal:
- Sign into your Hydrogen account.
- Once on your Hydrogen dashboard, head to the Product menu.
- In the Cards Settings menu, click on Card Design.
- Make sure your logo fits the format and size requirements.
- Upload your logo in the Design Config section, by either clicking the upload box and uploading from your computer, or by dragging and dropping your image file directly from another window onto the upload box.
- Click the Preview button to make sure you are pleased with your new design before saving it.
- When you have uploaded your logo and chosen your background color, click Save.
Note: if, after clicking the Preview button, your logo does not appear on the card preview, it means that the file format or the size of your file is incorrect. Please re-upload a corrected file.
Change Your Logo
You can change the logo you have saved on the portal at any time:
- Sign into your Hydrogen account.
- Once on your Hydrogen dashboard, go to the Product menu.
- In the Cards Settings menu, click on Card Design.
- Hover over the upload box under the Front Logo Section and click on the Remove button.
- Make sure your new logo fits the format and size requirements.
- Upload your logo in the Design Config section, by either clicking the upload box and uploading from your computer, or by dragging and dropping your image file directly from another window onto the upload box.
- When you have uploaded your new logo and chosen your background color, click Save.
Note: if, after clicking the Preview button, your logo does not appear on the card preview, it means that the file format or the size of your file is incorrect. Please re-upload a corrected file.