Advertising IMAGE FORMATS

Most people that send us logos send them in jpg format and inserted into a Word doc. Unfortunately, a logo in a jpg format is not going to put your best foot forward. And you would be surprised at the quality of the logos received for ads. We've seen logos from very large companies come in here that are an embarrassment to the company. So here's the scoop on image format.

Jpegs are best for photographs. Why? Because unlike gifs or pngs they have millions and millions of colours. So the colours in photographs slide easily from one colour to another. See the difference between saving a photo as a jpg and as a gif?

Rachelle Gagnon jpg format See how the colours in the gray background blend together.	Rachelle Gagnon gif format See how the colours in the gray form coloured bands and don't blend together. Notice how her face is dotted.

The problem with jpg format is that the compression algorithm tosses away info. Which means that if you save at too low a quality or save your logo with jpg, you get squiggly lines where solid colours should be.

Also, every time you resave the jpg, you get worse and worse quality.

Rachelle Gagnon jpg format Original compression.	Rachelle Gagnon jpg format Resaved a few times. Notice the squares in the background. Compare her complexion on right side. This one has little dots in it and the skin doesn't look as smooth or healthy.

Gifs or pngs are best for logos. Gifs only have a few colours. And they don't have the same compression algorithm. As a result, when there are only a few colours, such as in a logo, or when there is text in the image, you want to save the image as a gif or png.

Just have a look at this logo to see how awful it looks saved as a jpg but how saving it as a gif makes it look sharp and crisp.

Saved as a gif file above.
See how crisp and clean the text is. No blurring or squiggly lines.

Saved as a low quality jpg.
See all the squiggly lines around the letters?

In conclusion, you want your company to have its best foot forward when you're recruiting. So make sure when you send out an ad that you send images that make you look good.