What is vector art and why do we ask our customers for it? According to Wikipedia, vector art is, “images that are defined in terms of point on a Cartesian plane connected by lines and curves to form shapes.”
What?
Simply put, vector graphics and art are made of points and lines that can still be manipulated in software such as Illustrator. It allows the image to be scaled without sacrificing quality – so if you want your logo on a pen AND on a folder, you’ll want to have vector art available so they look good on both.
Generally you can tell if your file is vector if it’s a particular kind a file - .ai, .eps, .pdf are the most commonly used.
The other kind of image is a raster image. They’re made up of tiny squares of color called pixels to create the image. However, if you take your little raster image (such as a .jpg or .gif) and enlarge it to print on a t-shirt, you’ll start to see all those tiny squares and your logo will look blurry. The only time you can use a raster image is if it’s at 300 dpi and saved at the correct size and we’re printing it as a process print.
If you don’t have vector art – fear not! Your logo can be redrawn/recreated by our talented Graphics Design team into clean, usable art. Contact your sales team member for more information.