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On the blog ...

Design Jargon Translated – Vectors

It’s Monday. Time for me to translate some design jargon into plain English, just for you. Today we’re talking vectors!

Here’s the scenario: Your designer is cooking up a new set of marketing materials for you. You have all the ingredients together. You’ve have copy written, you’ve searched through your files, found a .jpg file of your logo, and sent it all over to your designer and now…

Your designer says: “I need your logo in vector format not raster.”

“What’s wrong with the .jpg I sent?” you ask.

Nothing. It’s perfectly fine, except it’s already baked. Done. Crispy. Toasted. It can only be what it is, just a little .jpg.

Your logo in a vector format is like sugar cookie dough. It’s all ready to be rolled out and cut into shapes. It’s malleable. Smooth vector lines (usually created in Illustrator) allow your designer to scale your logo up, scale your logo down, adjust the color and then save it out into whatever format, size and resolution is needed for the marketing pieces you want.

Your logo in a raster format is like a baked cookie. It’s much harder for your designer to take a raster (.jpg, .tif, .png, .gif, .psd) format logo and make adjustments. It’s like trying to take that baked sugar cookie and give it different shape without destroying it. The only way to do it is to take a bite. Then there you are with a half-eaten cookie and an unprofessional logo.

So now you are on a hunt for your logo in vector format. When you’re searching your files look for a file that ends in .eps or .ai. The most common vector formats.

If you don’t have a vector file of your logo, your designer may want to recreate your logo in vector format. Let them do this. Pay them for the extra work and make sure they give you a copy of files for future use. That way you’ll have the ingredients you need the next time you want to cook up some marketing materials.

Come back next Monday and I’ll explain more about raster files or maybe I’ll just talk about cooking, I’m kinda hungry over here.

I have a confession.

I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have time to write a blog post, or take a walk, or sweep the kitchen floor because I’m just too busy.

Busy isn’t the problem. The problem is focus. Somedays it’s a lot easier to switch over to check Twitter, or see what’s up with my cousin on Facebook, or check my email, than to focus.

Here’s the thing, I know when I focus, even for a few minutes, I can get a whole lot of work done. What I can accomplish when I’m completely focused on the task at hand is amazing.

So I started challenging myself to focus using an online timer called e.ggtimer.com.

I simply put in the number of minutes I want to focus on whatever project I’m working on, press GO! and I’m off.

Just doing this switches my mind into work mode. It brings out something so deeply engrained in me from my days as a magazine art director. I’m racing the clock to meet a deadline. Must. Meet. The. Deadline.

The timer goes off, time has flown by and I have accomplished so much just by giving myself a little bit of time to focus.

What works for you when you need to focus?

4 Flowy, Flirty, Feminine & Free Fonts

I have so much fun testing out fonts to find just the right ones for my clients. I particularly like feminine fonts, cause I’m just girly that way.

The following fonts would be great choices for logos or website headers if your personal style leans toward feminine and flowery with a professional feel.

~~Honey Script~~ No longer available.