Allow me to introduce myself. My name is David Riensche. I’m the Art Director here at FGI.

I didn't come up with this "creative" label. I learned it. They call the room where my office is the “Creative Department.” Often people come by and ask for “something creative.” Sometimes they suggest that I “work my big creative brain,” or “come up with an out-of-the-box creative solution.” Eventually, propaganda like that gets to you. You start believing.

I suppose the reason they say we’re the Creative Department is because no one knows what else to call us. The Project Managers manage projects, the Programmers program, the Search Engine Optimization guy optimizes websites for search engines, the VP of Operations plays golf with the VP of Business Development. It all makes sense. Except for the Creative Department. We exist in a sort of intangible, unaccountable, we-won’t-know-it-until-we-see-it sort of world. It’s hard to label that. So they call us creative in an effort to make us feel okay about our otherwise confusing situation.

I'm good with that. I'm happy to have a label that helps people understand what I do.

I guess the conclusion of this introduction is that labels and definitions help us. And soooooo, with this in mind, following is a list of terms you may hear someone from the “Creative Department” using in a scoping session (where you logically scope things) or a strategy meeting (where we meet about strategy).

EPS
Encapsulated PostScript. A file format that may or may not contain editable, vector artwork. You may hear us ask for an EPS of a logo. This is because vector artwork can be stretched until the ends of the earth without any loss in quality. See “vector.”

Flash
Animation and/or the software program that makes the animation in a vector format, ideally for the web. Often the stuff that moves on a web page.

GIF
Graphics Interchange Format. A file format that is low in size, and therefore ideal for the web. Should not be used for images that require detail.

Grayscale
Images that contain values of white and black and everything in between. (Not black and white.)

High Resolution Image
This means the image has a lot of pixels per inch, making it more detailed and of higher quality. Typically, high resolution printed images are 300 pixels per inch (ppi) while web resolution images are 72 ppi.

JPEG (or JPG)
Joint Photographic Experts Group. This file format is also ideal for the web, but typically larger than GIF images. Most folks use JPGs instead of GIFs when they need a little more detail and quality.

PMS
Pantone Matching System. A specific color system used to match colors exactly, regardless of the printer, in printed materials. Most companies have PMS colors specified as part of their corporate identity.
 
PDF
Portable Document File. A file format that can be viewed by anyone using the free Acrobat Reader, available from Adobe.com. This is the file format that aids most companies in the effort to “go paperless.”

Pixel
The little squares of color that make up images on computer monitors.
 
Raster
A raster image is an image that is made up of pixels, as opposed to the vector format explained below.

RGB
Red Green Blue. RGB color is what you see on computer monitors or TV screens. All the colors are created using red, green and blue lights. Web documents are set up in this color format, as opposed to the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) color format used in printing.

TIFF
Tagged Image File Format. A high quality, high resolution file format often used in printing.

Vector
Vector file formats are created using mathematical paths. Point A connects to Point B, which connects to Point C, which connects to Point A, creating a triangle (for example). It’s kind of like connect-the-dots. This creates imagery that can be expanded to any size without losing quality. Vector graphics must originally be created in a vector program, and cannot be “switched” from raster to vector without redrawing (recreating) in a vector program.