Designing banners, backdrops and other displays for your trade show booth involves many considerations. But whatever combination of text, layout and imagery you choose for various elements, when it comes to visuals, image quality always is a factor.
What is Image Quality?
In this context image quality refers to the ability of the image to be enlarged without loss of clarity.
In a previous post we explained: “Vector graphics are images that are defined not by pixels, but by mathematical descriptions of the shapes, colors, lines they contain. A vector graphic can be enlarged or reduced to practically any size without changing the image quality.”
Vector graphics typically end with .ai (for Adobe Illustrator), .eps, .svg and sometimes .pdf.
Other common graphic file types: .jpg, .gif, .png are raster images. Raster images are composed of pixels, each pixel a dot of color. (Photographs are raster images.) Raster images can be created and saved at a range of resolutions — the higher the resolution the higher the image quality (but also the larger the file-size).
Raster images degrade when enlarged, becoming blurry and pixelated. If the image started out at a high resolution, it can be enlarged without degradation to a much greater extent than can a low resolution graphic or photo but there are limits. Vector images, on the other hand, can be enlarged indefinitely without loss of quality, limited only by the capabilities of the output device.
Vector Images in Trade Show Displays
Trade Show displays come in many shapes and sizes but the word “big” describes most of them. That means the png or jpeg version of your logo that works well enough on your website or in many print applications will likely be insufficient for a banner or backdrop. Ditto other images. So you will be advised to provide vector versions of your logo, graphics and images. (Hunt for that .eps version of your logo — your designer may have provided it!) If you don’t already have them available you will need to have them created / re-created in vector rendering software. Once your logo and/or images are in a vector graphic format you can use them on trade show displays with confidence!
If you need help creating or re-creating vector graphics for your trade show displays, give us a call!
