Create a BIMI compatible file from Inkscape

Background

BIMI only supports SVG Tiny Portable/Secure, which is a quite restricted profile. My logo is quite simple, but Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape both create entries that are not compatible with it, mostly by usingstyle attributes. Saving an Optimized SVG and editing the resulting file worked from Inkscape.

Steps

1. Add a title

The document should have a title for the format to be valid for BIMI. Add it in Inkscape:

Document Metadata page

2. Save the right format

Use Optimized SVG in the Save As dialog:

Save As Optimized SVG

3. Configure export

The precision of the output must be set to 2 and Collapse groups should be selected.

Optimize settings

You are removing precision from the orignal SVG, review the output, particularly around corners and edges.

4. Edit the resulting SVG

Replace the version attribute of the svg node from version="1.1" to version="1.2" baseProfile="tiny-ps". As a sed one-liner:

sed -e 's|version="1.1"|version="1.2" baseProfile="tiny-ps"|'  

You also need to remove the metadata section as Inkscapes adds incompatible elements to it (like rdf:RDF):

 <metadata>
  ...
 </metadata>

5. Validate the result

Follow the official instructions and validate the resulting svg file using jingtrang. I added this to my justfile.

Illustrator steps

1. Export correctly

Save As SVG Tiny SVG

You are removing precision from the orignal SVG, review the output, particularly around corners and edges.

2. Remove groups

If your SVG contains groups (<g> elements), they need to be removed. I used svgo to minify the file and it does it automatically.

3. Add a title

Even when a title is set in Illustrator, it will not be added to the final SVG. Add <title>Your Title</title> as the first child of <svg> by hand.

4. Set the version

Change baseProfile="tiny" to baseProfile="tiny-ps". If using svgo, the version gets removed, add it back as version="1.2".

2026-03-22

Updated 2026-03-23