Alignment In design, alignment refers to the arrangement of lining up the top, bottom, sides, or middle of text or images in a straight or parallel line.
Aperture A partly enclosed, moderately rounded, negative space or opening in some characters.
Ascenders In typography, ascenders are the stems that extend above the “x” height of lower case letters. For example, the letters “d” “b” and “h” have ascenders. Many typefaces can be distinguished by the height of ascenders.
Baseline The imaginary, horizontal line upon which a line of text resides.
Bleed In print design, bleed is the area that extends to the edge of a piece.
Bleed-through In print design, the bleed-through is the area where heavy ink has seeped through. Generally, a bleed-through occurs with very thin paper or heavy ink.
CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black). Signifies the colors a printer works with; also referred to as process color.
Comps (comprehensives) In the design process, this is the step that follows thumbnails. This is the first draft of the creative design process.
Crossover Words and Images that run across 2 or more pages.
Deboss A design technique that indents/depresses an image beneath the surface.
Descenders The stem on some lower case letters that extends below the baseline. For instance, the letters “p,” “g” and “y” have descenders.
Dummy Text (Lorem Ipsum) Refers to the placeholder text designers use when drafting a page layout.
Elements of Design The 7 fundamental elements of design are:
- Color
- Size
- Shape
- Space
- Line
- Texture
- Value
Emboss A graphic and web design technique that adds dimensions to visual images.
Font A comprehensive variety of type including style and size.
Flush The lining up of images or text against the left or right portion of a page is called a flush. A flush-left or flush-right refers to the flush alignment.
Ghosting (also referred to as screening back) the process by which an image is made transparent so that a background image or color is visible.
Gradient A fade between colors. Commonly used to add depth to a design.
Hickey marks on a printed design piece that occur due to external elements (for instance, dust or bits of paper)
HSB stands for Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. It is a color space that designers may utilize to control and/or change each element separately.
Imposition The process by which a designer orders the pages of a piece correctly for print.
Justification In design, justification refers to the typographic alignment (at the top, bottom, left, right or middle) of text or visuals on a page. Justified text (or “fully-justified text”) is is aligned to both the left and right margins of a page.
Kerning The process by which spaces between letters and characters are adjusted for aesthetic purposes.
Lab stands for Luminance, a, b; a is the measure of green/red in an image; b is the amount of blue/yellow. Positive/negative levels measure the Lab. It is the science-based scale of the human perception of color. Created by the French Commission Internationale d’Eclairage, it is also called CIELAB.
Leading The measure of space between lines of text; represented by points and calculated from baseline to baseline.
Loupe A small magnifying glass utilized by designers to check the registration/information of a piece.
Logotype An individual type that produces/prints a logo/emblem.
Mock-up In packaging design, this is the close-to final rendition of a design. A mock-up is generally sent to clients to portray what a design would look like on a certain package. In web design, it is a rough draft of what a web page will look like.
Principles of Design are:
- Balance
- Unity
- Contrast
- Economy
- Direction
- Emphasis
- Rhythm
- Proportion
Print All design that is not on-screen (in its finished/final form). Print design includes marketing collateral, packaging, business cards, retail signage and so forth.
Rag The off-balanced alignment of text along the margins of a page. “Ragged right” refers to uneven alignment along the right side of a page. The more “rag” a text has, the more uneven the lengths of the lines; in which case the text is referred to as “ragged.”
Render A render is the draft version of a project. May refer to the appearance of a design project as well. A final render is the completed project/product for presentation. A 3D Render automatically converts 3d wire frame models into 2D visuals; and utilizing digital graphics, automatically applies 3D photorealistic effects to the images.
RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue –the three main colors on a screen. They compose what is known as the “additive” color space (adding all colors together result in white).
Spot Color the ink (not mixed by process colors) that is used design for branding consistency, such as in logo design where uniformity is key.
Tail The descending accentuation stroke on the letters “Q,” “R” and K.” The tail is often aesthetic and/or curved.
Tracking The process of adjusting the space between a group or entire block of letters This term is commonly confused with kerning. However, tracking is used by designers for overall character spacing mainly for body text, while kerning is a more selective spacing and generally used when designing the text for headlines.
Typeface A typeface is the design of letters/text and numbers. Improved typeface may become a font.
Vector Illustrated images that involve the following steps: a) defining points b) defining the elements that fill the space between c) vector is stored as a mathematical formula.
Word Mark In logo design, a word mark is a text-based logo (identifying mark) used to represent a brand, product or service.
Wire frame In web and graphic design, a wire frame is the structure for a design, created for establishing where a design will be located on the web page, as well as navigational planning purposes. A wire frame does not include the actual design itself.
