Can I get some “good” Catholic artwork, Please?
Today, we (the company I work for) received “good” artwork for custom printed balloons with a Catholic parish’s logo screen-printed on them. Why am I making such a big deal about this? You wouldn’t believe how many times we get artwork for Catholic organizations and churches that is simply unusable, either because it is a low-res raster image, or a really tiny high-res raster image. I am almost embarrassed by this.
Art has always been a big part of the Catholic faith. There is no reason our logos can’t be great too! The following is a quick lesson of the differences between “good” artwork and what we classify as “bad”, “horrible”, or just plain “ugly” artwork!
Here is an example of what we are looking for when it comes to good, clean vector artwork (the red selection points are to show the vector attributes.)
What is the difference between raster and vector artwork?
Raster: are images made up of pixels (such as: jpgs, gifs, tiffs, picts, psd, bmp, etc…) and can become distorted or “fuzzy” if blown up larger than it’s intended medium. For instance, web pages are generally created in low resolution which look fine on computer monitors and load very quickly. However, these low-res (usually around 72 dpi) images can not be used for print media. High resolution images are those ranging from 300 dpi or higher, at actual size. The acronym dpi stands for “dots per inch”.
Vector: art created in a drawing program (such as: Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Macromedia Freehand). Vector artwork can be blown up to the size of a building and still look as crisp as it did sized for let’s say a coffee mug. This is because vector art is not made up of pixels, but of shape objects.
Generally vector art is the preferred format of most suppliers, but this also depends on the type of medium the artwork will be used.
It is worth paying a professional to design your logo, or to have them recreate your existing logo in vector form. The church secretary, using a low-end software package, just isn’t going to cut it these days.
15 Sep 2008 Catholic Tech Tips
They designed the R.A.G.E. Media logo (Although I’ve adapted it for different placements).
Perhaps there is someone in your local parish who does graphic design as well. Just make sure that you specify that you need vector art. If they look at you puzzled, then chances are they haven’t had formal training and you may want to call one of the local companies.
Paul, I really like the concept of DesignContest.net! Some of my best work has come about by way of competition. I might have to look into this further. Thanks : )
[...] Update: For more tips, check out this article on the Catholic Tech Tips blog: “Can I get some ‘good’ Catholic artwork, Please?” [...]