In my last article, “6 Styles of Successful Subject Lines + Some Tips”, I said up next I’d be discussing how to turn your emails into social posts, however, I felt like I overlooked a very important topic in my series; Vector Art.
In an industry that decorates products with logos and art, it is FUNDAMENTALLY IMPORTANT to know what vector art is and isn’t. You may be rolling your eyes and thinking, I’ve been in this industry for years of course I know what vector art is, but believe it or not, there are still promo peeps that do not know the difference between vector and raster (JPG) or have customers that don’t know.
My role in the promo industry has always been on the marketing side, either with a Supplier or a Service Provider, and I have had many instances where I was sent a JPG, TIFF, PNG or even JPG saved as an AI file when vector art was required.
Here’s a little trick to remember what the difference is.
Think of vectors as Legos®, you can pull them apart and manipulate the object. The lines remain crisp when the image is increased in size.
Vector file formats: .eps, .ai, .svg, .pdf (if saved properly)
Think of raster art as a painting, it’s flat and you can’t manipulate it. The lines become pixelated/blurry when the image is increased in size.
Raster file formats: .jpg, .jpeg, .tiff, .png
As I mentioned above, I have received .ai files where the client opened their JPG in Illustrator and saved it as an Illustrator file. This does not convert the art to vector. That’s like putting a wool rug on a wolf and calling it a sheep.
Now, what if your customer says, “I don’t have a vector version of my logo.”? Well, they either got screwed over by whoever created their logo, a good Graphic Designer will always provide vector art (plus various raster versions) of a logo, or they may have deleted the file because they didn’t know what it was or didn’t have a program that could open it. In this case, have them send the highest resolution of the file they have so the logo/art can be redrawn as vector. Of course, this will cost them as it is very time-consuming. They should also send any typeface files, if available, or else they may not end up with an exact match.
Hopefully, this has helped shed some light on a very important topic in our industry and helps save time on your next project by removing the back-and-forth with the art department. I’ll see you next month to discuss how to turn your emails into social posts.