How can I stop colours changing when resizing graphic?

[lalidesign]

I'm new to Illustrator and only started using it this week to redesign the company logo.

I made the logo fine and I'm pleased with it, I decided to make it really big to start out with as I thought it would be easier as it may be blown up to be used on boxes/lorrys/signs etc..

I then needed a small version for letterheads and documents so I resized the original by grouping it all together and rescaling it to a smaller logo. However when I rescaled it the colours on the logo all changed to a lighter colour! I zoomed in and checked all the colours and they are still the dark blues I wanted but are displaying lighter. Now my small logo looks completly different to the big one!

How do I get passed this? Should I just start again and make a small logo from scratch, is there no way I can make the existing one smaller without all the colours changing?

Can someone reply soon as my company are going to be wondering why I'm taking so long to make a logo! (

 

[apepp]

...in illustrator the program is vector based, therefore resizing is not necessary unless the original is too large to resize in a layout application such as QuarkXpress...

...if your colour values are the same in values then the issue is with your monitor and display so nothing to worry about. Always go by the numbers as they don't deceive, but your monitor can...

...vector graphics are device independant, meaning you can output to any size without loss of quality, although quality depends on your output device...

...if mixing vector and bitmaps in illustrator resizing becomes a different problem, generally going smaller is fine, but larger becomes a different matter if the bitmap info hasn't got enough resolution...

Andrew

 

[apepp]

...just to add...

...if it is all vector you can just use the same logo across all media as vector is scalable without loss of quality...

Andrew

 

[lalidesign]

Thanks for replying.

I don't think it's my monitor, when I rescaled the logo to a smaller version I then opened it up in Fireworks and opened the original and you can just tell that the two logos now look completely different.

I can't just use the massive original I created for people at work to use on their day to day documents because most the people here arnt computer illiterate enough to resize a logo themselves. Plus it just takes up time. Plus they have specifically asked me to make a big and small version.

So all I want to do is make the logo smaller to save as a .JPG without all the colours going lighter and all the lines going thicker...How can I do that?

 

[lalidesign]

Oh it doesn't matter I have figured it out!

 

[apepp]

...ah, yes, fireworks is a different beast, i took it your issue is with illustrator only as no mention of fireworks in first post...

...anyhow, fireworks is pixel based and RGB, so if illustrator is in CMYK mode you will need an RGB workspace instead and export to RGB...

...glad you have success now...

Andrew