Issue with image and link alignment

Question

So i've got this issue with my CSS where I cannot display a text-link inline with my image. The links are on a different height relative to my image? What can the issue be? I've tried using different alignment methods such as vertical-align etc.

Maybe I should rewrite the whole code?

html,
body {
    font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;
    background-color: #efefef;
}

body{
    margin: 0;
}

.left_div {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    width: 25%;
    background-color: #fff;
    position: fixed;
    height: 100%;
    overflow: auto;
    text-align: center;
}

.left_div img {
    width: 50%;
    height: auto;
    margin: 2vh 0 2vh 0;
}

.left_div a {
    display: block;
    color: black;
    background-color: rgb(217, 50, 141);
    padding: 16px;
    text-decoration: none;
    width: 75%;
    margin: 2vh auto;
    border-radius: 5px;
    color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
    transition: all .2s ease-in-out;
}

.left_div a.active {
    background-color: rgb(65, 29, 100);
    color: white;
}

.left_div a:hover:not(.active) {
    background-color: rgb(153, 22, 94);
    color: white;
}

@media screen and (min-width: 765px) and (max-width: 968px) {
    .left_div {
        width: 100%;
        height: auto;
        position: relative;
        text-align: left;
    }

    .left_div img {
        width: 12.5%;
        height: auto;
        margin: 0 0 0 2vw;
    }

    .left_div a {
        display: inline;
        color: black;
        background-color: rgb(217, 50, 141);
        padding: 16px;
        text-decoration: none;
        margin: 0 auto;
        border-radius: 5px;
        color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
        transition: all .2s ease-in-out;

    }
}

@media screen and (max-width: 765px) {
    .left_div {
        width: 100%;
        height: auto;
        position: relative;
    }
    .left_div a {
        text-align: center;
        float: none;
    }
}

<!-- HTML -->


    <div class="left_div">

        <img src="img/mlp_logo.png" alt="My Little Pony Logo">


        <a class="active" href="#">Home</a>
        <a href="#">News</a>
        <a href="#">Contact</a>
        <a href="#">About</a>
      </div>

Here is a jsfiddle to show the issue.

https://jsfiddle.net/bcyu0f52

Thanks!

edit (screenshot added)

https://i.sstatic.net/o6S4L.jpg As you see on the screenshot the image and text are misaligned height-wise.

Answer 1

As already stated in the comments, setting the proper vertical alignment did the trick:

Solution was to add:

.left_div img {
  vertical-align: middle; 
}