Posts Tagged ‘vector’

All month long, I will post the projects that I’m currently working on. While most people show only their final (approved) samples, I like to post my initial proofs. While I haven’t in the past, I’m going to start posting the changes so viewers can follow my process.

1. Seattle Reproduction – Egg donor information brochure
   

   This is the initial proof presented to the client

2. Entertonement – The Office page & banner designs

   

   

3. Sesame 24×7 – Turner web design
4. Entertonement – Contest clip page
   
5. Curvine – Resilience Fitness web design
   
6. Curvine – Seattle Hebrew Academy web design
   
7. Seattle 24×7 – Prince web design
   
8. Sesame 24×7 – Cassinelli web design
   
9. Sesame 24×7 – Ward web design
   
10. Sesame 24×7 – Phucas web design
    
11. Sean Slote – Logo & business card design (Sean one this at a charity auction)
    
12. Sesame 24×7 – Gonzalez web design
    

When I’m working with new clients, I typically need to ask them for a vector version of their logo. Most have no idea what that means and more often than not, they don’t even know where to look for one. Many clients that have very busy logos that don’t look good when scaled down or need to be black & white only.

If you are having a new logo made, you need to know the following information:

1. Your logo should be scalable. The best logos are simple with clean lines. If you have too much detail in your logo, it will look messy when scaled small.
2. Ask for a logo in black & white, color and reversed so you have a version that will work with whatever printed or web piece you may need in the future.
3. Be sure to get a vector logo as well as high-resolution JPGs. A vector logo is one that is created in Illustrator or Freehand. The file can be scaled to any size without losing quality and will always appear sharp. It also usually has a transparent background and can be placed on anything. The file extension should be .ai or .eps. JPGs usually have a white background, which makes it difficult to place over color or photos, especially if your logo is mostly text. JPGs are useful when a client needs to the logo in a Word document or something with a white background. A client can also view a JPG on any computer, but cannot usually open and view a vector file. JPGs can only be scaled down…scaling up will result in very poor quality.
4. A logo from your website will NOT work for printed pieces. Your logo on your website is only 72 dpi (dots per inch). You need at least 300 dpi for print. Since the web can’t display a vector logo, it will either be a JPG or GIF, neither of which can be scaled larger. While a print-out of your web page may look ok on when printed on your desktop printer, it is handled differently when printed on a press and will appear blurry/fuzzy.
5. Your logo tells who you are and should be safe-guarded from loss like any other business file. Put all these versions on a disk and in a safe place. Keep the designer’s contact info in case you ever need to refer back to them.

As a value-added service, Lolalu Design will always give you a logo designed to be scalable and in various formats with instructions on keeping it safe. I will also help you insert your logo in your email signature and give you instructions for other scenarios where you might want to use your logo.

If you don’t understand the difference between vector and raster, you’re not alone!

The majority of images you see everyday on your computer are raster-based. Raster graphics are simply a grid of pixels, with each pixel assigned a color.  When you zoom in on a raster image — like a .jpg photo of your family reunion — you soon see the pixels in Aunt Sally’s face (or was that acne?).

Raster art is terrific for photographs, because it can capture and show very realistic gradients in color – like the highlights and shadows in people’s faces.   Newer digital cameras can take very high resolution photos, so you have to zoom in a LOT before you see Aunt Sally’s pixels.

The downside is that the file sizes can be very high — in the 20-40 megabyte range — and image quality can be lost when the file is re-saved as a JPG.

Vector art is based on mathematical formulas – not pixel colors. So instead of a series of colored blocks to create an image, a vector art file is composed of “instructions” that tell the computer to show a curve with a given length and bend, an area of certain color, etc.These instructions take up far less space than an equivalent raster image — so a 40MB raster file may only be a 800KB vector file. That smaller size makes editing much more efficient, because your computer isn’t freaking out while trying to render your changes. And it  makes them much easier to manage and share.

The other huge advantage of vector is that the image is crisp no matter how far you zoom in. So you don’t have to worry about a graphic being pixelly when you blow it up for a large sign, binder cover, etc. Vector art can be viewed and printed at any scale — whether business cards or billboards!  As an .eps file, it can be read by any vector-based graphics program, and even imported into Microsoft Word as clipart. This means that the same logo file that looks great on a business card will also look great on a billboard.  The bottom line — for print design, a vector logo will always look and work best. Any design agency will typically start with a vector logo, but can easily export Web-friendly files from this format.

One more thing — a raster image will either be grayscale or CMYK  color for print. If you have a logo with one or two colors, you’ll still pay for a 4-color print process using a JPG or TIF image. If you use a vector image, you can specify Pantone spot colors and really reduce your printing costs!

If you only have a logo that is raster (JPG) based, I can help you turn it into a vector graphic that can be used on many different applications. Just contact me at anita@lolaludesign.com.