All too commonly, clients just ask us to grab their logo from their website or send us a jpeg of their logo for inclusion in printed material. We always respond by asking for the vector logo which can cause confusion as not many people understand this terminology. So hopefully this blog should make things a little clearer for you.

Raster Graphics

Most images you see on your computer screen are raster graphics. Pictures found on the web and photos you import from your digital camera are raster graphics. If you zoom in on a raster image, you’ll notice that as the pixels become larger, the edges and details become blurry and jagged. Images like this do not work for logos as you can scale them down but if you try to make them bigger they are going to become hazy and lose quality. Not ideal when you are creating a professional looking logo. If the file extension ends in .BMP, .PNG, .TIF, .GIF, .JPG then they are raster images.

Vector Graphics

Unlike raster images, vector graphics are not made up of pixels. They are comprised of paths, which are defined by a start and end point, along with other points, curves, and angles. A path can be a line, a square, a triangle, or a curvy shape. These paths can be used to create simple drawings or complex diagrams.

We use Adobe Illustrator to create all our icons and logos so that they retain that crisp quality no matter what dimensions they are scaled to. Files that end in .AI, .EPS, .PDF, or .SVG typically contain vector graphics.

Advantages of vector format
  • Scalability: The logo design will be used in different situations, be it large or small. For example it could be blown up for use on an exhibition stand or shrunk down to go on a letterhead. One of the main advantages of vector images is that you can scale the logo up or down without any loss of quality.
  • Easy to edit: Each component of a vector graphic can be manipulated. When creating the logo the client may decide that they don’t like a particular element of the logo. Instead of starting from scratch we can just modify the particular area, colour, font etc that the client wants. This saves time and avoids unnecessary stress.
  • Small File Sizes: Vector images are formed mostly by simple gradients or flat colours. This means they don’t take up too much space and are easy to transfer or store on computers
  • East to export to different formats: Once we have made the vector logo, it is very easy to save this file as a different format (jpeg etc) depending on how the client would like to use it. We always supply the vector logo along with any other format the client desires.

So there you have it – a vector format is required to make sure that your logo looks as professional printed as it does on screen! We hope this blog has helped you understand the terminology a little bit better.