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Getting ready for BIMI: Prepare Your Brand Logo For Outgoing Emails.

Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) instantly and visually shows your brand to users practicing Brand Indicators for Message Identification ( BIMI ). By adding BIMI instructions to your DNS record, your organization’s logo is displayed on email communications that originate from your domain.

BIMI’s main goal is to incentivize brands to become DMARC-compliant, which improves email security by making communication harder for attackers to spoof.

We’ve attempted to make setting up BIMI as simple as could be expected. However, a few steps are technical. If you’re not an experienced IT or email administrator, reach out to your VMC provider to set up BIMI for your organization.

Setting up your logo: Creating the Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) format

To get ready for securing a VMC — and general BIMI availability — your logo should be in Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) design. However, here’s the rub: the SVG should cling to the SVG Portable/Secure (SVG-P/S) profile, and there is no commodity layout for vector applications like Adobe Illustrator today. That implies you’ll need to make it utilizing the resulting best procedures.

bimi

Option 1: Do it yourself in Adobe Illustrator

Step 1: Transform pixels to vector format (‘.ai’, ‘.eps’, ‘.pdf’, ‘.svg’)

Many organizations have logos made in Photoshop or another designing softwares that are composed of pixels. But, this will not work. So, all things considered, you want to change your logo over to vector format initially.

Many brand logos are easily convertible wordmarks using fonts and line arts. But for some organizations with complex craftsmanship, you may need to spend some time re-working the plan to be vector compatible.

Step 2: Export as SVG Tiny 1.2

When you have the logo in a vector format, you’ll need to start by exporting it as an SVG Tiny 1.2 profile. In Adobe Illustrator® you can do that via the “Save As” dialog:

  1. Double-check that your image is vector-based (‘.ai,’ ‘.eps,’ ‘.pdf,’ ‘.svg’).
  2. Open your file in Adobe Illustrator.
  3. Save your file by using the option “Save As.”
  4. Once the dialog box is open, name the file and choose “SVG (svg)” from the dropdown “Format.”
  5. Click on “Save” and wait for a new dialog box to open.

Getting ready for BIMI: Prepare Your Brand Logo For Outgoing Emails.
BIMI

Step 3: Open your trusty text editor

Next, you’ll need to open your SVG file in a text editor (e.g., Notepad or Notepad++), or a code editor like Vim or Nano. As SVG files are text files, the most important point is that you can open, edit and re-save to a “txt” format with a “.svg” file extension.

After you open the file, there are a few edits you will need to make:

  1. While on the SVG file source, verify you see the following settings in the header:
    xmlns=http://www.w3.org/2000/svg, version=”1.2, baseProfile=”tiny-ps
    There may be other information in the top of your file like the sample below, but these MUST be present.For example, you may see a string like this:If you exported from Illustrator, you’ll need to change the baseProfile to tiny-ps, and delete the x=, y= and overflow items.
    Getting ready for BIMI: Prepare Your Brand Logo For Outgoing Emails.
  2. Next, you’ll need to add the title element. We suggest hitting return after the xml:space=”preserve” item and putting the title element there. Put your organization name in this field.
  3. Careful you don’t put the title item inside the graphic code itself. Like in this model screenshot beneath, just after the “=preserve” stuff on another line is fine. However, assuming you pursue the line that beginnings with, approval might fail.Getting ready for BIMI: Prepare Your Brand Logo For Outgoing Emails.
  4. Resave your file as text format, with SVG extension.

Step 4: Line endings must be LF

The SVG detail requires that line endings in the SVG record be Line Feeds or LF characters. The Illustrator, SVG export tool, includes CR LF. And, in some content managers, the default is to use Carriage Returns or CR characters, or a combination of CR/LF. The specification requires the use of only LF characters.

We suggest utilizing a text editor tool like Notepad++ to visualize and do this change. While you are in Notepad++, here are the steps to be performed.

Go to menu View → Show Symbol → Show End of Line you can see the CR LF characters visually.

Next from menu item Edit → EOL Conversion and select Unix (LF).

Step 5: Re-save your file as text format, with SVG extension.

And you’re done.

Option 2: Use the BIMI working group’s graphic conversion tools

The BIMI working group has delivered graphic conversion tools to assist with formating your logo as an SVG-P/S.

Their tools include Adobe Illustrator Export Script: A script that can be added to Adobe Illustrator (either Windows or MacOS) and offers the potential to change over an open SVG Tiny 1.2 record into SVG P/S design.

Tips for better presentation

  • Images are best with a square perspective ratio(1:1).
  • The image ought to be focused, so it shows ideally in a square, an adjusted square, or a circle.
  • Non-straightforward foundations are ideal, as the rendering of transparency can be fickle.

Here are the example images as demonstration of how logo might appear.

Getting ready for BIMI: Prepare Your Brand Logo For Outgoing Emails.

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