Scalable High Definition Visual Design

Recently, a colleague purchased a brand new iPad 3 and after some begging, I was able to make him show me his new toy right next to its predecessor so that I could see for myself just what Apple meant by "hi-res".  Surely enough, the retina display on the new iPad 3 did not disappoint. At first glance, the difference may have seemed fuzzy but upon further inspection, the iPad 3's resolution covers the whole gamut and color spectrum of the images displayed (black to white gradients show more grays). Immediately, this struck a chord in my Visual Designer brain -- High Definition Visual Design is Here whether we're ready or not! For years, most of us Web Visual Designers have relished one of the biggest advantages we have had over our Print Design siblings -- the fact that we can work with smaller file sized images. As an example, download any image from a website and open it in Photoshop or something similar. Open up Image Size and scroll your eyes down to the part that says Resolution and most likely, you will see something around 72 ppi (pixels per inch). Given the iPad 3's 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution screen and a calculation of 264 pixels per inch, that changes the way we work a bit. 



Thankfully, the brilliant minds that be have been actively looking for ways to prepare for the future and whether they knew it or not, pure HTML & CSS elements address this to a good extent by cutting down on the number of images used in the markup. A lot of UI elements these days are rendered in the browser which translates to easy scaling on any screen that you throw them in. Another solution (if not a more important one Now than ever) is SVG or Scalable Vector Graphics. A technology that has been available for years (Adobe Illustrator), its main advantage shines when working with detailed images (think Starbucks logo). Move over PNG, your time time might be up, though that depends on where is Adobe taking SVG and what are they waiting for? In the meantime, since we all tend to listen and eventually follow (whether we like to admit or not) when Apple speaks, it's only a matter of time until other manufacturers follow suit and 264ppi becomes a minimum. Whatever the case maybe, now sure is an exciting time.