Like any industry, specific words have different meanings and they’re not always the same from industry to industry (wouldn’t that be so nice though?!), so learning these new words can sometimes feel like you’re learning a whole new language! To give you a head start on understanding what the heck your designer is saying to you, we’ve included meanings for some of the more commonly used design terms below:
Principles of Design
The Principles of Design are balance, proportion, rhythm, unity, emphasis, contrast, repetition, and variety. These principles are ideas and strategies used to organize or arrange a design. How the principles are applied to a design depend on the purpose and intent of the design.
Element
The individual components that make up a design.
Mood Board
A collage consisting of a collection of colour, text, and images to convey a general feeling or understanding about a topic, event, or brand.
Mockup
A visual example of what the final design will look like. Mockups are commonly used throughout the design process to help the designer depict in real-life scenarios to clients how their design will look in printed or digital form.
Proof
A proof can be either digital or printed – more commonly known as printed. A printer will typically provide 1-2 printed examples of a submitted design to ensure colours, text, and layout is correct before printing the full quantity. A digital proof can be a file sent to clients from the designer or to the designer from the printers to check colours, text, and layout before proceeding to printing.
CMYK
A standard colour profile that stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black that is best used for printing.
RGB
A standard colour profile that stands for Red, Green, and Blue that is best used for digital purposes.
Palette
The range of colours used within a design or project.
Gradient
Gradient occurs when one colour fades into another colour. The colour within the gradient could be all one hue (i.e. yellow) but different tints (i.e. light yellow and dark yellow) or they could be two or more hues (i.e. yellow and green).
Pantone
A standard universal language that is used for matching colours and specifying printing inks. Designers commonly have Pantone swatches to help pick out colours for a design project palette.
Monitor Calibration
Each screen or monitor can display colour and brightness differently. To ensure a standard calibration, designers will adjust their screen settings to ensure the printed design matches the digital design.
Icon
A design of a graphic symbol that represents a real or make believe person/object/topic.
Typography
The art and technique of arranging type to make written language/text legible, readable, and appealing to viewers when displayed in printed and digital form.
Typeface
A particular design of type (alpha numeric symbol) – each typeface has different styles, weights, slants, and features (i.e. Helvetica, Times New Roman, Century Gothic) that make them unique.
Texture
How a surface or substance appears or feels when touched or not touched. Different textures can convey different meanings and emotions to the viewer.
Freehand
In the case of design, freehand means a drawing or illustration done without the support of tools such as rulers. Sketching is a form of freehand and is typically used in the initial stages of the design process.
Bleed
Bleed is part of a sheet design but is the area of the sheet that will be trimmed off when printed. All projects that will be printed require a bleed as part of the design sent to the printers to ensure part of the design isn’t cut off when printed.
Copy
In design, copy is referring to the written body text that used. For example, text in a magazine and invitation wording.
Resolution
Resolution refers to the sharpness and clarity of an image. Resolution is important when printing and for graphics as the higher the resolution the clearer the design appears.
File Format
A file format, such as JPG or PDF, is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. Some file formats allow a variety of software programs to open the file, while other file formats only allow specific software programs to open the file (for example, only Photoshop can open a PSD file).
White Space
Also known as negative space, is the portion of a design that is left blank or unmarked such as space between images, text, paragraphs, and elements.
Margins
A margin is adjusted through the page settings and are the spaces that separate the edge of the page and the text. There is a top, bottom, left, and right margin that can be adjusted.
Alignment
Alignment is the act of positioning text and images in a certain way. Standard types of design alignment include: Left-aligned, Right-aligned, Center-aligned, and Justified.
Rule of Thirds
A photography principle that is also applied to projects that helps the designer produce well-balanced designs. This technique has the designer divide their design into three columns and three rows. Where the vertical and horizontal lines meet are the focal points where the main parts of the designs can be placed to make the design more effective.