What you see here is the scanned version of a Magic: The Gathering card:
Now here is the beginnings of a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) representation of the same card for comparison:
Obviously there are differences between the two in terms of font, the texturing on the colored areas of the card, and the symbols in the upper right hand corner that indicate the casting cost aren't there yet. But just as clearly, this is an easily recognizable representation of the card and it scales very quickly to any size we may need for it. Plus, with SVG as our basis we can continue to tweak and improve the card to make it look more like a real M:TG card or to accomodate unusual layouts and layering like you see on some cards (for example, cards in The X-Files game have a paper clip that usually goes over part of the images on the card).
If you look at the SVG code for the card you will see that an image is scaled and placed on the card but most of the card is rendered using a vector description of the card and the text on it. It's not hard to see how we can alter the description slightly using data about the colors and text for any M:TG card on the fly and render any card we need quite quickly without having to keep high resolution versions of each on hand.
