Here's a guide to help you unlock our secret language when we're designing.
Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is really a collection of software tools that have a variety of uses. It started off as a digital proofing tool, which enabled graphic designers to repurpose any file format into a document that could be read by any user, regardless of whether they had the original software that created the file, or which computer platform the user had.
Additive Color
Additive colors are produced by light. The more light produced, the brighter the colors. This is in direct contrast to subtractive colors. Red, green and blue are the primary additive colors and are used in computer monitors.
Anti-Aliasing
Smoothing or blending the transition of pixels in an image. Anti-aliasing the edges on a graphic image makes the edges appear smooth, not jagged.
Artwork
Finished artwork is an all inclusive term for the finished, supplied documents or digital files that are supplied to pre-press or for print. Traditionally finished artwork would have been pasted up boards that were ready for photographing to make films and printing plates. It was known as 'camera ready artwork'.
Bitmap
A bitmap image is a graphics file that is made up of pixels. It's quality and usable size are defined by the number of pixels per square inch (PPI). In direct contrast to a vector graphic image, bitmap images will lose quality if they are enlarged and gain quality if they are reduced in size. As such, they are resolution dependent.
Bleed
Bleed is the extra area outside of a finished document that designers must allow if they want images, that are butting up to the edge of the page, to be cropped properly.
Brief
A designer's brief, or creative brief, is what a client will give to a designer to help them come up with a creative solution or set of concepts. Briefs can vary drastically from client to client. Some will simply give a few verbal pointers, whilst others may supply full written documentation with information about the company, their customer base, statistics, corporate identity information and so on. A thorough design brief can be crucial for the creation of a succesful solution.
Caption
A caption is the descriptive text that is used to explain the contents of a photograph, diagram or illustration.
CMYK
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) are the four primary printing inks that make up a full color printing job. Also known as the four process colors and the subtractive color.
Comp (comprehensive, composite, rough layout, mock-up, dummy)
A layout that has been mocked up to show how the different elements of the design will look when the job has been printed. This could range from a rough sketch, to a fully formatted digital layout or printed proof
Contrast
The difference between the darker and lighter tones of a photographic image.
Copy
Copy is the term given to the raw editorial text supplied for formatting into a designed document.
Copywriter
A copywriter is a commercial author who write copy for adverts, brochures, annual reports, or other designed marketing material. Copywriters are often freelance, but many also work inside the larger advertising agencies.
Crop / Trim
To crop an image is to trim it to a size that best enhances the contents or to make it fit into the allocated space in the design.
DPI / Dots-Per-Inch
The generally accepted term for describing the resolution an output device - such as imagesetters and printers. It is also used in relation to bitmap graphic files and scanned images, that are intended for printed output - as opposed to pixels per inch (PPI), which is used for images that are intended purely for on-screen use.
Drop Shadow
A drop-shadow is the shading effect used to give the appearance of raised type or graphics on the designed page.
Duotone
A black and white photographic image that has been given a color tint, by duplication the image onto a second color channel.
EPS / Encapsulated PostScript
An Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file is a self-contained PostScript graphic file that contains vector image data. The 'Encapsulated' part means that graphics applications, such as Adobe Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDraw can use the information to lay out a page. Line art drawings made in programs such as Illustrator and Freehand can be saved, exported and printed as PostScript files. An EPS graphic file has the advantage of all vector images, in that it can be enlarged to any size, without a loss of quality.
Exclusion Zone
The area around a logo or company brand, is a measurement of space where a company's corporate identity guidelines, specify that there should be no other graphic or text. Any element that infringes on this space is said to be breaking the brand guidelines. Generally these specifications are written into a company's corporate identity manual and are handed out to printers and designers, so that they are made aware of the conditions.
Font
The letters, punctuation, numbers and symbols that make up a single typeface. An example of a font is Eras Light ITC. Another font is Eras Bold ITC. The typeface in this instance is Eras. It is the variations of this typeface that are fonts.
FPO / For Position Only
For position only (FPO) refers to the placement of a dummy image, dummy text, graphic or blank box as a placeholder - during the proofing or editorial process - to indicate that there is a real image or 'live' copy still to come.
Flyer / Leaflet
Usually a single sheet or handbill designed to be handed out or picked up by consumers.
Grayscale
A grayscale image is a digital graphics file made up of 265 levels of grey. Grayscale is the normal method of sending an image to print for black and white images.
Gradient
The gradual transition of two or more colors.
Grid
A layout grid is the non-printing set of guidlines that designers use to align images and text in a document layout.
Halftone
Process used in print for Photographs, paintings, and drawings. Because most printing presses cannot produce continuous tones, images are converted to halftones to simulate continuous tones. Using fine dots of varying size and spacing, halftones can reproduce the shades and textures of the original image.
Hairline
Very thin rule or keyline. There is no agreed measurement amongst designers and printers, but somewhere between 0.125pt and 0.25pt would seem to be generally agreed measurements.
High Resolution
A bitmap image that has a high pixel resolution. Photographic images that have been scanned and that are intended to be used for printed reproduction must be high resolution. Usually defined in terms of 'pixels per inch' (PPI). It is a relative term. Images that are going to be printed must usually be scanned to a resolution approximating 1.5 times to 2.5 times the intended line screen of the output device.
Hue
Another term for color.
Italics
The slanting forward of serif fonts.
JPEG / Joint Photographic Experts Group / JPG
JPEG is a type of file format used to compress the size of images. The downside is that there is some loss of quality in a JPEG image. This can be limited by using a high quality setting, but this results in a larger file size. The JPEG format is largely used to keep the file size of web images (especially photographic images) down, to enable faster downloads.
Justification
Generically, placing lines of text in a particular relationship to one or both margins. As distinct from flush left or flush right, justified text has both the left and right margins even.
Keyline
A keyline is another term for a rule, line, or even a frame border, used in graphic design. Keylines can be set in many graphic design software applications to different widths, to be solid or dotted, or even with various patterns.
Kerning
The process of selectively adjusting the spacing between letters pairs to improve the overall appearance. The letter pairs that most often need some kind of kerning treatment are AV, AY, PA, and AT. These letter pairs often look awkward together, and need to either be moved closer together, or further apart manually.
Landscape
The orientation of a document that is to display a page length wise instead of up and down. A landscape document is where the width is wider than the height.
Left Justify
Setting text against the left margin, that is, with unused space all placed at the right. Also called ragged right.
Logotype
A typographic trademark or symbol, frequently using letterforms.
Low Resolution
The term applied to a bitmap graphics file (usually a photographic image) that is only used for positional purposes, or 'on-screen' display. The term 'low-resolution' is not an absolute term. A low resolution file is typically 72dpi, at the intended output size and so is generally considered unsuited for printed work as it will probably appear bitmapped or aliased. However, some newspaper or large posters are output at very course line screens and so this size of image is no longer considered 'low-resolution'.
Margin
The blank space to the left, right, above, and below the text on a page. Margins may contain up to 50% of the area of a well-designed book page.
Masthead
Magazine term referring to the printed list, usually on the editorial page of a newspaper or magazine, that lists the contributors. Typically this would include the owners, publishers, editors, designers and production team. The masthead is often mistakenly used in reference to the flag or nameplate, which actually refers to the designed logo of the publication.
Multimedia
Multimedia design is a somewhat all-inclusive term. It became fashionable in the early days of CD-ROMs and now can be assigned to any type of graphic design that has an interactive design element or involves 3D or animation.
Noise
A noisy image or noisy scan is one where there are random or extra pixels that have degraded the image quality. Noise in a graphics image can be generated at the scanning stage, by artificially enlarging an image by interpolating the pixels, or by over-sharpening a digital photograph.
PDF / Portable Document Format
PDF is the Postscript file format used by Adobe Acrobat. It is a cross-platform file format designed to preserve the integrity of a document, regardless of the software that was used to create it. PDF files are a very common format for sending files off to be professionally printed.
Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the graphics industry's standard photographic image manipulation program. Developed originally for Photographers and high-end photo retouchers, Photoshop is now used by practically every single design agency in the World. Adobe Photoshop can be used to create separated print quality bitmap graphics, and also optimize low resolution digital images for use on the web.
Photoshop
Stands for Pantone® Matching System, a customized color system of guides to help calibrate color matching outside of the CMYK spectrum.
PPI / Pixels Per Inch
Pixels per inch is the method of measuring the size of a bitmap digital image on-screen. This is separate from dots per inch, or the output resolution of an image.
Portrait
The orientation of a document that displays the longest sides of the document vertically. An example of this is an 8.5" x 11" paper viewed normally.
Postscript
A page description language, developed by Adobe, that redefined the design, print and publishing industry in the 1980's. The Apple laserwriter in the mid-1980's shipped with PostScript and, combined with Pagemaker and the Macintosh, launched the desktop publishing (DTP) industry.
RGB
Red, green and blue are the 3 colors that are used by monitors to display images. They are called additive colors because the more of each of each RGB color that is added, the brighter the resultant color. 100% of red, green and blue will produce white.
River
A river is a typographic term for the ugly white gaps that can occur in justified columns of type, when there is too much space between words on concurrent lines of text. Rivers are especially common in narrow columns of text, where the type size is relatively large. Rivers are best avoided by either setting the type as ragged, increasing the width of the columns, decreasing the point size of the text, or by using a condensed typeface. An often overlooked method of avoiding rivers, is the careful use of hyphenation and justification settings.
Rule / Underline Rule
Rules are simply lines used to underline words or sentences or to separate different elements of a design. They can be vertical, horizontal or diagonal.
Running Head
A title or heading that runs along the top of a printed publication, usually a magazine.
Sans Serif
A typeface without serifs.
Serif
A small stroke at the end of the main strokes of letterforms. Typefaces with serifs are called serif typefaces and those without, sans serif typefaces.
Space
The part of the printed page that is not occupied by print or other images. The ground or complement of the image.
Subtractive Color / Reflective Color
Subtractive color is the process in color theory whereby color is seen as the result of light reflecting from a printed surface. Cyan, Magenta and Yellow inks are subtractive colors, as are any printed or 'solid' colors - as opposed to additive colors such as those produced by RGB computer monitors. Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are known as subtractive colors because the more of each ink that is added the darker, or less reflective, the resultant shade. In theory, the application of a 100% mixture of Cyan Magenta and Yellow inks will produce a solid black.
Spot Color
Spot color refers to a color that does not go through the CMYK process to obtain color values. Instead, each color in a document is created using that exact color, not a mixture of CMYK halftone values. Spot colors are used most often in limited color jobs where the cost of ink is too high for 4-color CMYK printing, or where a particular color (say for a logo) used must be exact.
Text Wrap
Term used to describe body text that is running around a placed image (or block of text, for that matter).
Typeface
A distinctive, visually consistent design for the symbols in an alphabet.
Vector Graphics
A vector is a mathematically calculated method of plotting accurate lines and curves. Unlike bitmap images, it is resolution independent and allows graphics images to be enlarged to any size, without any loss of quality.
Weight
Heaviness or blackness of letters. Numerically, the ratio of the widths of vertical strokes to the x-height.
Widow
This is a single word or line of text that is left on the top of a page or column that was continued from a previous page or column.
