We understand why you’d want it. The design is yours – you paid for it – so handing over every file feels like the natural next step. Here’s why we don’t do that and what we offer instead.
1. Native artwork files are extremely intricate
Our design files rely on a carefully balanced assembly of fonts, linked images, calibrated colour profiles, typographic rules, pre-press settings, transparency handling rules and lots more that live on our studio machines and cloud servers. Without a similar environment, the file could potentially break – missing fonts, reflowed text, missing graphics. What you’d receive wouldn’t match what you approved. That potentially could introduce an argument we never want to have if something (almost invariably) goes wrong on the press.
2. It’s a professional standard, not a restriction
Professional design studios across the industry don’t share native source files as standard deliverables — just as an architecture firm wouldn’t hand over the plans to a building they designed for someone else to modify. The deliverable is the finished, print-ready output, not the working files behind it. Graphic Design is a professional practice with years of formal education, training and experience behind it. When it comes to complex artwork, a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing, especially if the job is to be commercially printed.
3. It protects the integrity of your design
Professional software like InDesign has a very steep learning curve. Well-intentioned edits – even small ones – can inadvertently shift spacing, break typography, or alter colour settings in ways that are hard to spot until something goes wrong on the press. We want your work to always look its best, and we want to be able to stand over it.
4. It’s part of how we sustain our studio
The source file represents our process, templates, and craft built up over years of hard work. Retaining it means we can continue to employ talented designers and support you quickly and efficiently for future updates, reprints, and revisions — often at a fraction of what starting from scratch would cost. Need to make a change? We’re here for that. Most updates are quick and straightforward and sometimes free of charge. Just get in touch, and we’ll turn it around fast and at a fair fee.
5. Copyright is the sum of its parts
When we design something for you using commercially available fonts and royalty-free images, we own a licence to use these assets and are authorised to use them to create materials for you. In line with copyright law, the IP for the material created (the unique assembly of these parts) remains with us. We’re not authorised to pass 3rd party assets on to anyone else for their own use, so you’d need to buy licences for these. This can be a substantial cost, but one that we factor into our overheads. Asking us to share our files to pass on to a 3rd party would allow them to use our years of hard work, experience and education to generate a fee for themselves. This is why IP laws exist; otherwise, all creative industries would be in a death spiral race to the bottom.
What you do receive
Every project we complete comes with print-ready PDF files, web-optimised versions where relevant, and any specific export formats agreed at the outset. These are the files your printer, developer, or team actually needs.
If you have an ongoing need to edit content yourself — say, a price list or a regularly updated document — let us know at the start of a project. In those cases, we can discuss building something in a format that gives you that flexibility, such as a template or a design system you can manage independently.
We appreciate your understanding. If you have questions about your deliverables or want to discuss future edits, we’re always happy to chat — info@vitamin.ie.