Our Graphic Design
As well as website design, we also provide graphic design services including logo design. Your logo and branding is a fundamental part of your company and will likely be the thing that people recognise you by. When you think about all of the large companies, their branding is usually very distinct and easy to recognise.
Images are generally produced in one of two basic formats, raster images and vector images. Knowing the difference between the two is important when it comes to graphic and logo design. To help you understand the difference between the two, we have provided a brief (and rather simplified) explanation below.
Raster Images
A raster image is basically an image made up of a fixed number of pixels (or dots) like a photograph. Raster images look clear up to a particular size (depending on the number of pixels in the image) after which it will start to look pixilated (or "blocky").
Vector Images
A vector image instead uses paths (lines and shapes) to draw its image. Because of this, a vector graphic uses those shapes, lines and angles to "re-draw" the shape at whatever size the final image needs to be. This is important when it comes to logo and graphic design because it basically means that your images can be produced at any size, without any loss in quality.
An example of the difference is below.
This began as a 50x56px raster image of a letter "A" which has then had to be blown up 3x the normal size to produce the final size of 150x168px. Notice the pixilated edges to the letter.
This is a vector image of the same a letter "A" but here the artwork was saved directly from the vector program to the final size of 150x168px. Notice the edges of the letter are much smoother.
Believe it or not, the smoother, higher quality image above is also a smaller image, meaning that as well as looking much better, it is quicker to download! While this is a simple test and in reality, most raster programs allow text to be displayed in larger sizes without this pixilation, they cannot do so when it comes to images, like a logo.
For example: the client provides us with a drawing of what they want to logo to look like, lets say, a satellite image. The drawing provided looks like this:
The original drawing submitted by the client.
If the new drawing is to used both online (e.g. on the website) and also in printed media (e.g. letterheads. brochures etc) then the image may need to be reproduced in various different sizes. This presents no problem if the image is created as a vector image as large and small sizes will be re-drawn automatically. However, if a large version of the graphic was needed at some point, and the image was only created as a raster image, the pixilation situation may mean that the image needs to be remade from scratch, potentially a costly affair.
Below is the end result using vector and raster artwork.
A rasterized version of the final drawing.
A vectorized version of the final drawing.
For this reason, we try wherever possible, to design all graphics using vector artwork (the exception to this being digital photographs which by design will always be rasterized images.)