Vector Design Using a vector drawing or illustration software application when designing a logo or graphic design allows you to easily use your design for any online or print project. Vector designs are not limited to a specific size because they are made up of connected lines and curves, rather than a collection of pixels that make up raster designs. Vector is essentially a mathematical “connect the dots” approach to design, where the dots are adjustable “nodes” that allow you to easily edit how your vector design looks. Since vector designs are defined by math rather than pixels, they can be scaled smaller than a postage stamp to larger than a billboard, without losing any quality. Vector formats generally include EPS, AI, WMF, EMF, SVG and even PDF (if the PDF supports vector). Raster Design Raster based designs are made up of a collection of pixels, square dots that are assigned a color value. These collections of pixels all come together in a grid-like pattern to make up an image. Digital pictures are the most common raster based images. The resolution of a raster image is given in terms of “dots per inch” (dpi). Most office printer support up to 300 or 600 dpi, and professional printers can support over 2,500 dpi. Raster image designs are great for online or small print projects, but are limited to how big they can be printed since they are based on square pixels rather than lines and curves. If you try to increase the size of the raster image to the size of a billboard, for example, the design will become fuzzy and out-of-focus. Raster formats generally include BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, PDF and PSD.