Vector: Past & Present
Filed Under graphic design
I remember when I was a teenager, I would spend hours in front of the computer creating art. My program of choice was Aldus Freehand 3, back when AOL 
charged by the hour and the Internet wasn’t cool yet. I spent many evenings after football practice using lines and Bézier curves to transform the movie poster for Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story into a vector graphic. (I’m pretty sure I only finished Bruce’s pants, but I won’t know for sure until I can find a Mac that can handle a 14-year old floppy disk, pictured at right). As my high school yearbook’s graphic artist, I created sport-equipment icons - like baseball bats, lacrosse sticks, and tennis rackets - and curved text logos with gray scale blends.
Anything the editors wanted, I felt that I could create in Freehand. I felt impressed enough to photograph some of my work for a portfolio (pictured on left). Yes, photographed. That’s how new digital art felt at my school.
That was thirteen years ago.
I haven’t made a vector graphic since leaving high school and going off to college, where I traded in my keyboard for a shovel in pursuit of a degree in archeology.
Skip ahead a few chapters in my life and here I am, aspiring to become a better graphic designer. Since 2000, when I was introduced to Photoshop 5, I’ve become more comfortable creating raster graphics, or graphics created with pixels. I’d like to expand my horizons and get back into creating vector graphics, but I’ve learned that it isn’t like riding a bike: my skills are rusty. At first glance, you’d think that vector artwork can be limiting - but you’d be surprised.
The smart kids over at Stanford University have recently created a logarithm that will transform any image (photo, artwork, etc.) into a vector graphic. The results are amazing. Check it out:
It might take a closer look to tell that one of these images is a photo and the other is a vector graphic. Vector Magic allows you to upload any image and they’re super-duper computers will crunch it and spit it back out as an image made completely with lines, Bézier curves and polygons. Until last week, the service was free, but these guys added some business smarts to their computer smarts and are now selling their processor services at an average of $2 bucks for each download. Each new account will get you two free downloads (sign up before March 5th and receive four downloads for free). The bitmap (PNG) versions are still free and you can upload, vectorize, and preview the results for free.