Talk Design To Me: The Ultimate Design Dictionary

OH “CROP”, conversing with a designer is all Greek to you? Fret not, you have landed on the right guide to learn all the design lingos!

Graphic design isn’t just a profession, it’s a language! A conversation with a designer can be bewildering if you are not up to scratch with design terms. Just as learning Korean from watching Korean dramas, mastering the design language can be a “HELvetica” of fun!

Accent Colour

Accent colours are used for emphasis in a colour scheme. These colours can often be bright, striking and are used sparingly, to emphasise, contrast or create rhythm. The opposite of accent colours are dominant colours.

Ascender

An ascender is the part of a lowercase letter that rises above the main body of the letter. In a majority of typefaces, the lowercase letters b, d, f, h, k and l are ascenders.

Ai

Ai stands for Adobe Illustrator document. Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor. It is an industry-standard app that lets designers create logos, icons, drawings, typography, and complex illustrations for any medium.

Alignment

Alignment is the way that the different elements in a design are arranged, usually in relation to a page or document. In typography, alignment, which can also be called range, is the setting of text relative to a column, tab or page. It’s very easy to notice when elements in a design aren’t aligned.

Aspect Ratio

Aspect ratio is the ratio of the width to the height of an image or screen. Aspect ratios are usually expressed as a mathematical ratio but, no fear, there’s no maths involved — it’s just two numbers separated by a colon. It’s usually width:height so, for instance, the aspect ratio for an iMac is 16:9 (16 inches wide by 9 inches high).

Baseline

In typography, the baseline is the invisible line that text sits on—think of it as the floor, but for text. It’s also the place that x-height and other important parts of a font are measured from. 

Bleed

Bleed is a printing term that refers to the edge of the sheet that will be trimmed off. In design terms, the bleed is the artwork or background colour that extends in to this area, in case the cut made to the design or sheet isn’t exact. It’s a way of ensuring that none of the design gets accidentally cut off or there’s no unexpected borders.

Body Copy

The main text that people will read on a design. The body copy refers to the paragraphs, sentences or other text that are the main content in any publication, whether print or digital. Put in real life terms, the body copy of a magazine is the articles themselves rather than the titles, subtitles, authors, etc.

Bold

A heavy weight of any given typeface, often used for emphasis.

Brand Identity

The visual version of a brand. The brand identity is made up of everything that relates to the brand which includes logos, typefaces, colour palettes, slogans, tone of voice, website, packaging and other marketing material. When designers talk about ‘branding’, it usually involves developing all aspects of the brand identity.

Calligraphy

The art of writing letters with a nib pen or brush pen.

Centre Aligned

When text is aligned to the centre of a text frame, with the rag on the left and right sides of the text frame.The art of writing letters with a nib pen or brush pen.

Character

A letter, number, punctuation mark or symbol.

Character Set

Entire collection of characters for any given typeface weight.

Clone

Clone or Clone Stamp is an Adobe Photoshop tool. The Clone Stamp is effective when you need to copy exact detail and colour from one part of an image to another area. 

CMYK

CMYK, is the colour mode which should be used when designing for print. The acronym stands for, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black), are the four colours most widely used in printing. Similarly to RGB, these four colours can be combined in lots of different ways to produce a majority of colours in print. However unlike RGB, these colours are subtractive that get darker as they are combined. Black is added on top of the other three as mixing them will never produce a pure black.

Complementary Colours

Think of these as the bestest of friends in the world of colours! Complementary colours are the colours that sit directly opposite each other on the colour wheel. Examples of complementary colours are red and green, blue and orange and purple and yellow. Not only does your design stand out, using complementary colours make a visual highly aesthetically pleasing.

Colour Wheel

A colour wheel or colour circle is an abstract illustrative organisation of colour hues around a circle, which shows the relationships between primary colours, secondary colours, tertiary colours and complimentary colours.

Contrast

Contrast is the arrangement of opposite elements. Designers uses colours, shapes, textures, sizes or typefaces to create contrast. Contrast can be used to create areas of visual interest or even drama within a design.

Crop

A designer can cut out or crop unnecessary parts of an image to improve framing, highlight a specific subject or alter the image’s aspect ratio.

Crop Marks

Also known as trim marks, crop marks are marks that indicate to a printer where the paper should be trimmed. They’re essential when designing for print and make it much easier to communicate with the printers.

Descenders

Descenders are the opposite of ascenders, they’re the tail of letters. A descender is the part of a lowercase letter that descends below the main body of the letter. Generally, only the lowercase letters g, j, q, p and y are descenders.

DI

DI or Digital Imaging is the process of manipulation of colours and other image characteristics to an image or visual.

Die Cut

Die cut is a fabrication process that uses specialised machines and tools to convert stock material by cutting, forming, and shearing. In printing, die cuts are used to create custom shapes and designs for labels.

Display

Display type is fonts that are designed to make an impact and catch the eye. They are striking fonts used to make the design stand out like headlines, posters, billboards, logo and many more.

Dominant Colour

A dominant colour is a colour will hold its hue despite its surroundings. Dominating colours are aways seen as more powerful in a design.

DPI

DPI stands for “dots per inch,” which is a measure of a printer’s quality. 300dpi is recommended for high-quality printing.

Embossing & Debossing

Embossing and its counterpart debossing are finishing processes that involve creating dimensional relief images in to a piece of paper or card. The practice uses a printing press to lift the design into the material or sink the design into the material.

EPS

EPS stands for Encapsulated Post Script. This is a resizable file format that is commonly used for vector designs. Due to its high quality, it’s commonly used with print designs such as logos, business cards or brochures.

FA

FA stands for Final Artwork, it refers to the last approved version of a digital file before it is sent to print. Simply put, when the FA passes, the printing job begins!

Foil Stamping

Another finishing process, foiling is a type of printing where metallic or pigmented foil is applied to a surface through the application of heat and a die. A relatively uncomplicated process, foiling can add extra dimensions to a design especially packaging because they’re excellent for catching a potential consumer’s eye on shop shelves.

Font Colour

Used in web design to specify a colour.

Font Size

The height of a typeface, usually measured in points.

Font Weight

Font weight refers to the thickness of a font, in terms of both an individual font and different styles of a font like black, bold, light and more. Font weight ranges from 100 to 900 with “normal” regular font being 400.

GIF

Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) is a lossless format for image files that supports both animated and static images, usually used in web design or email marketing, now even on social media and messaging services.

Golden Ratio

The Golden Ratio is a mathematical ratio. It is commonly found in nature, and when used in a design, it fosters organic and natural-looking compositions that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Gradient

Sometimes specifically called a colour gradient, gradients are a gradual change of colour or shade. There are two types of gradients, axial/linear or radial, and both show the range of different shades and hues.

Greyscale

Greyscale is a colour palette that only uses black, white and different shades of grey. Greyscale can also be used in design for many different reasons from evoking nostalgia to helping you learn how to design better with colour.

Grid

We can’t stress enough how important grids are to designers! Grids are an underlying system of horizontal and vertical columns and guides used to provide structure, consistency, accuracy in any design.

Hand-lettering

Creating custom letterings from scratch using for a specific purpose or client.

Hex

A colour hex code is a hexadecimal way to represent a colour in RGB format by combining three values – the amounts of red, green and blue in a particular shade of colour. Hex codes are found alongside RGB and CMYK in a lot of design applications, but are most often used in HTML and CSS.

Hierarchy

One of the five basic principles of typography design, hierarchy creates organisation and direction in a design, giving order to the text elements. Hierarchy makes text more understandable and easier to read.

Hue

A hue is a pure colour without the addition of any tint or shade. However, neutral colours (whites, greys, blacks) are not considered hues.

Icon

Icons are something we all see practically every day, they are images used to represent objects or actions. Icons are simplified images that are minimal yet expressive. You can say that iconography is a universal language. Imagine way-finding in a foreign land without icons, you might end up in the wrong washroom. Icons design is simple yet so complicated because they can be easily understood without having to add any text or further details!

Italics

In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting, developed in early 1500s.

JPEG

JPEG stands for “Joint Photographic Experts Group”. It's a standard image format for containing lossy and compressed image data. Despite the huge reduction in file size JPEG images maintain reasonable image quality.

Justified

Instances when text is aligned to the left and right margin within a text frame, with no rag on either side.

Kerning

Kern is the space between two specific letters or characters, and the process of adjusting the space between letters or characters. Kerning can increase the legibility of a word or a entire block of text. It helps to create proportional and balanced typography and, in turn, better looking typography.

Kiss Cut

Kiss cut is a term usually used in sticker printing which includes light cuts within the border of your stickers. When stickers are created with kiss cuts, it means they can be peeled out of the backing material and the backing material remains.

KV

KV stands for “Key Visual”, which refers to graphic elements used repeatedly in marketing communication as a part of a current marketing campaign or consistently in all materials of a brand.

Leading

Pronounced ‘ledding’, leading is graphic design jargon for ‘line-spacing’. It refers to the space between two baselines of text. The larger the leading, the more space between the text giving it more room to breathe and, generally, making it look nicer. 

Left-aligned

Text that is aligned with the left margin.

Ligature

A ligature occurs where two or more letters are joined together as one character.

Logomark

A logo of a company that does not contain the brand name itself — usually a shape or character used to visually represent the company. Logomarks are more easily shown than described, so think of Apple’s iconic apple with a byte (bite).

Logotype

Also known as a wordmark, a logotype is a brand name styled as a logo—designed in a visually unique way for a company. They’re usually very obvious and quickly associate a business with its visual identity.

Lorem Ipsum

Lorem ipsum (also known as dummy text) is used as a placeholder that will be swapped out later with actual copy. The Lorem ipsum text comes from “The Extremes of Good and Evil,” written by Cicero in 45 BCE.

Margin

A margin is the space that you leave in between the final trim area and the image size area. This space ensures that after the product is trimmed, the content is not cut off or too close to the outer edges.

Mockup

A mockup is a realistic, normally 3D representation of a design, used to demonstrate how a design will look in the real world. There’s mockups for everything ranging from tote bags to iPads so they can be used to show how an entire campaign or brand roll-out would look. Check out a curated list of free mockups that are highly professional and easy to edit to bring your next project to life!

Monochromatic

Monochrome is a colour palette made up of various different shades and tones of a single colour. Do take note that while greyscale is monochrome, but monochrome is not necessarily greyscale.

Monogram

Monograms or emblem logos uses frames and shapes to enclose the company or organization name. Think badges, seals and crests.

Monospaced

A monospaced typeface is a typeface where each character is the same width, all occupying the same amount of horizontal space.

Moodboard

The starting point for a lot of designers, a moodboard is a way for designers to collect together lots of visual references for a new design project—these can be photos, images or typography. Moodboards are used to develop the project’s aesthetic, for inspiration or to help communicate a specific idea or concept.

Orphan

A widow’s (see below) partner in crime, orphans is a single word (or very short line of two or three words) that sits on its own on a new line or new page or column, usually to describes words that appear at the top of a page. Like widows, they can be very frustrating but any designer worth their salt knows to always look out for these tricksy bits of text.

Palette

A colour palette is a colour scheme that is chosen for a specific design or brand, making up part of a brand’s style guide. A palette should be carefully chosen so that the colours in it work harmoniously together and help make a design successful.

Pantone (PMS)

The Pantone Matching System is a standardised colour scheme used for printing, in addition to graphic design, it is used in a number of other industries including product and fashion design and manufacturing. Each colour has it’s own individual number and name.

Pixel

A pixel is the basic logical unit in digital graphics. Pixels are combined to form a complete image, video, text or any visible thing on a computer display.

Pixelated Image

In computer graphics and digital photography, pixelation is caused by over-enlarging the image. The tiny squares observed on the screen represent packets of data which have not been received, were lost in transmission or just lack of data forming a high resolution image.

PNG

PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics, a web-based format that does not lose quality when compressed. PNG files were created to improve on the quality of GIF files. The perks of PNG files, is that they have transparent background, this means you can easily drag and drop anywhere to enhance and beautify your visual, presentation slides or website!

Point Size

The distance from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender is the point size of any given typeface. 

PPI

PPI stands for “pixels per inch,” which is a measure of pixel density used by electronic image devices. You’ll likely see this used with scanners, cameras, TVs or monitors.

Printer’s Proof

Never underestimate the importance of a printer’s proof! These are the print sample of the FA design. Make sure to read, check and double check to ensure everything is correct and sign it off before sending it to the printer for the final print run.

PSD

PSD or Photoshop Document is the uncompressed working raster image file created by designers in Adobe Photoshop.

Quick Keys / Shortcuts

Whatever you call them, quick keys or shortcuts are one of the most important things for a designer to know! They refer to the certain keys on your keyboard that allow you to carry out specific functions in a single click, rather than a longer, more complicated process. A majority of shortcuts combine pressing the cmd ⌘ key on Mac or the ctrl key on Windows! It’s a life hack to master as many shortcuts as possible for efficiency!

Raster

Raster image or raster graphic is another kind of graphic image in the design world, a raster (which can also be called a bitmap image) is an image made up of a certain number of pixels. Each pixel has its own colour, hue, saturation and transparency which helps to make up the image as a whole. Unlike vectors, due to them being made up of pixels, raster images will lose quality and become blurry as they are being resized.

Readability

Degree to which text can easily be read, usually in typography or text layout.

Repetition

Repetition simply means using the same element in a design more than once. It can create a sense of unity, cohesion and consistency.

Resolution

The term resolution refers to the number of units, measured in either DPI or PPI, that occupy a linear inch an image, both on screen and in print. Resolution is used to denote the quality of an image - High Res or Low Res - in design lingo.

RGB

RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue, and is the colour mode which should be used when designing for digital applications. The three colours, Red, Green and Blue, can be combined in many different proportions to create any colour in the visible spectrum and as each colour refers to light, they grow brighter the more they are combined. It’s not magic, it’s just design.

Right-aligned

When text is aligned to the right margin with the rag on the left side of the text frame.

Saturation

Saturation is a term used in chemistry and photography, but design-wise it’s about colour. Saturation is the intensity and brilliance of a colour. 

Sans Serif

Sans is French for ‘without’ so you can probably guess that San Serif Fonts are fonts without serifs on the end of their letters. Usually, sans serif fonts are easier to read on the web and digital screens.

Script

Script type is a font that is based on modern or traditional handwriting styles. There’s two forms of script fonts, which are formal and casual script fonts.

Serif

Serifs are the small lines and hooks at the end of the strokes in some letters. 

Slab Serif Type

We’re not done yet with serifs, Slab Serif fonts are serif fonts that are characterised by its thickness, the serifs can either be block or rounded.

Spot UV

A method for coating printed products. The process involves using UV light to fix a varnish on the printed material, giving a glossy shiny finishing, mainly used for its decorative effect.

Style Guide

A style guide or a brand guideline is an important part of branding. They determine the correct set of standards for the branding of a business or publication.

Texture

In design, texture refers to the visual appearance of a design. In others, adding rich, layered graphics to a design can help to create a visual texture. 

Thumbnail

A thumbnail is a small, rough sketches of how a designer wants their design to look, which can be used to help decide upon a layout or how a design will come together.

TIFF

TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format, a common format for exchanging raster images between applications. TIFF produces a higher quality image than a JPEG or PNG, and is widely used among publishing industries and photographers. 

Tracking

Though they are similar, be careful not to confuse tracking with kerning. Tracking refers to loosening or tightening a selected block of text, while kerning is the process of adding or subtracting space between specific pairs of characters.

Typography

The term typography refers to two things. Firstly, the style and appearance of printed words. Secondly and more importantly, it refers to the art and procedure of arranging type to make it readable, legible, attractive and engaging in print or digital designs. 

Vector

Vector artwork is a term that describes any art made with vector illustration software like Adobe Illustrator. Vector artwork is built from vector graphics, which are images created with mathematical formulas. Basically this means that vectors can be resized or scaled to any size without losing quality or getting blurry.

White Space

White space, despite its seemingly misleading name, does not need to be white. It is the space, which can be any colour, pattern or texture, between different elements in a design that are essential in creating a successful design. Think of this, imagine graphic elements are like living creatures, they need their own spaces to live and breathe! Nope, designers are not weird to see graphics as living things!

Widow

Widows and orphans make designers very very sad because they are poor and lonely words left alone from the paragraph of text. A widow is a lone word or short group of words that appears at the bottom of a paragraph, column or page.

X-Height

X-Height refers very literally to the height of a lowercase x in a specific font. You may question why such a specific height is so important, but the x-height affects the proportion of any font and, in turn, its legibility.

Study them and commit these designers vocabulary to memory, but if that’s too much work, just bookmark this page and use it as your design word cheat sheet.