When words and images are laid out on a page in a pleasing and easy to understand way, somebody with a special interest in graphic design did that for you. If you are interested in becoming a graphic designer, you will need to learn the language of your clients around the world: English. Here’s a glossary of words related to graphic design to help you get started.
Glossary
- advertising
- The activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services.
- alley
- The space between two columns of set type
- apex
- Where strokes come together at the uppermost point of a character
- banner
- The type design of the name of a repetitive publication, such as a newspaper, newsletter, or magazine.
- baseline
- The imaginary line upon which text rests. Descenders extend below the baseline
- bleed
- Bleed is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet before trimming.
- book
- A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers.
- bookbinding
- Process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material
- bowl
- The enclosed oval or round curve of letters like ‘D’, ‘g’, b’, and ‘o’
- budget
- The total sum of money set aside or needed for a purpose
- caesura
- Operation of cutting a word with a hyphen at the end of line
- camera
- a device for recording visual images in the form of photographs, movie film, or video signals.
- capital
- The large letters of the alphabet; the original form of ancient Roman characters
- caption
- Text describing an illustration, photo, or other piece of artwork or graphic
- chromatic
- Of, relating to, or produced by color.
- clipping masks
- A clipping mask is an object whose shape masks other artwork so that only areas that lie within the shape are visible.
- color
- The property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way the object reflects or emits light.
- column
- One or more vertical blocks of content positioned on a page
- commications
- The imparting or exchanging of information or news.
- computer
- an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.
- contrast
- the degree of difference between tones in a television picture, photograph, or other image.
- counter
- The enclosed (or partially enclosed) space within letters such as ‘c,’ ‘e,’ S,’ ‘H,’ and ‘g’
- create outlines
- The line by which a figure or object is defined or bounded; contour.
- cutting lines
- On a pattern, the outermost dark line is the line upon which you cut.
- densitometer
- a device for measuring the density of a material.
- density
- the opacity of a photographic image.
- ear
- The projection on letters like the lowercase ‘g’ and ‘p’
- emulsion
- A fine dispersion of minute droplets of one liquid in another in which it is not soluble or miscible.
- epigraph
- Short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme
- exacto
- an acronym of EXtreme ACcuracy Tasked Ordnance, is a sniper rifle being; for cutting.
- filter
- A lens screen of dyed gelatin or glass for controlling the rendering of color or for diminishing the intensity of light.
- flexography
- A rotary relief printing method using rubber or plastic plates and fluid inks or dyes for printing on fabrics and impervious materials such as plastics, as well as on paper.
- folio
- In a book:the number of each page. In a newspaper: the number of each page together with the date and the name of the newspaper.
- font
- Combination of typeface and other qualities, such as size, pitch, and spacing
- four-color process
- To reproduce full-color photographic images, typical printing presses (and some inkjet printers) use 4 colors of ink. The four inks are placed on the paper in layers of dots that combine to create the illusion of many more colors. CMYK refers to the 4 ink colors used by the printing press — the subtractive primaries plus black.
- frame
- A border or case for enclosing a picture, etc.
- gradation
- a scale or a series of successive changes, stages, or degrees.
- gradient
- A gradient is a graduated blend between two or more colors or between two tints of the same color. The output device you use affects how gradients color separate.
- graphic
- A graphical item displayed on a screen or stored as data.
- grid
- Basic structure for all pages of a document
- gutters
- Space between columns
- highlight
- To emphasize or make prominent a sentence of a text.
- hyphenation
- To divide or connect (syllables, word elements, or names) with a hyphen.
- hyphenation
- Operation of cutting a word with a hyphen at the end of line
- imagesetter
- A very high-quality type of color printer used to print glossy magazines, newsletters, or other documents.
- incandescent light
- emitting light as a result of being heated.
- italic
- Designating or pertaining to a style of printing types in which the letters usually slope to the right, patterned upon a compact manuscript hand, and used for emphasis, to separate different kinds of informations, etc.
- journal
- A newspaper or magazine that deals with a particular subject or professional activity.
- justification
- Printing. the spacing of words and letters within a line of type so that all full lines in a column have even margins both on the left and on the right.
- kerning
- The adjustment of spacing between letters
- keyboard
- a panel of keys that operate a computer or typewriter.
- layout
- The way in which text or pictures are set out on a page
- leading
- Distance between the baseline of successive lines of type
- lettering
- the letters inscribed on something, esp. decorative ones.
- light
- the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible.
- lithography
- the process of printing from a flat surface treated so as to repel the ink except where it is required for printing
- logo
- A symbol or other design adopted by an organization to identify its products, uniform, vehicles, etc.
- lowercase
- Small letters as opposed to capital letters
- margin
- Area between the main content of a page and the page edges
- matrix
- a rectangular array of pixel in rows and columns that is treated as a single entity and manipulated according to particular rules.
- monochrome
- A photograph or picture developed or executed in black and white or in varying tones of only one color.
- mouse
- a small handheld device that is dragged across a flat surface to move the cursor on a computer screen, typically having buttons that are pressed to control functions.
- mousepads
- a piece of rigid or slightly resilient material on which a computer mouse is moved.
- negative
- a photographic image made on film or specially prepared glass that shows the light and shade or color values reversed from the original, and from which positive prints can be made.
- office
- a room, set of rooms, or building used as a place for commercial, professional, or bureaucratic work.
- offset lithograph
- A printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface
- orphan line
- A single line of a paragraph at the top of a page or column
- orthochromatic
- (of black-and-white photographic film) sensitive to all visible light except red. Orthochromatic film can therefore be handled in red light in the darkroom but does not produce black-and-white tones that correspond very closely to the colors seen by the eye.
- panchromatic
- (of photographic film) sensitive to all visible colors of the spectrum.
- photo retouching
- Treatment of a photograph to remove dust spots or blemishes, or to adjust or remove unwanted elements of the image, or add new elements to an image.
- photography
- The art or practice of taking and processing photographs.
- pixel
- Short for Picture Element, a pixel is a single point in a graphic image. Graphics monitors display pictures by dividing the display screen into thousands (or millions) of pixels, arranged in rows and columns. The pixels are so close together that they appear connected.
- poor/hight resolution
- Image resolution is the detail an image holds.
- positive
- A photographic image showing lights and shades or colors true to the original, esp. one printed from a negative.
- prepress
- Of or relating to typesetting, page layout, and other work done on a publication before it is actually printed.
- printer
- machine for printing text or pictures onto paper, esp. one linked to a computer.
- printing
- The production of books, newspapers, or other printed material.
- process
- Perform a series of mechanical or chemical operations on (something) in order to change or preserve it.
- raster image
- Image made up of individual pixels
- rotogravure
- A type of intaglio printing process, which involves engraving the image onto an image carrier
- screen ruling
- Number of rows or lines of dots per inch or centimetre in a screen for making a screen tint or halftone. Also called line count, ruling, screen frequency, screen size and screen value.
- serif
- A small line attached to the end of a stroke in a letter
- serigraphy
- The act of making a print by the silkscreen method.
- shades
- darken or color (an illustration or diagram) with parallel pencil lines or a block of color.
- shadow
- the shaded part of a picture.
- size
- The size of the font on the paper. It can be a standard 12 point or much smaller or much larger.
- small caps
- The typesetting option in which the lowercase letters are set as small capital letters; usually 75% the height of the size of the innercase
- software
- Programs used by a computer (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, etc)
- solid color
- An even color; one not shaded or variegated.
- spacing
- The amount of unused space that exists between words, letters, and lines in text
- style sheet
- A style sheet is a file or form that defines the layout of a document.
- swipe file
- A collection of stuff that has worked, arranged in such a way to inspire you and give you future ideas.
- technical constraint
- Technical limitation or restriction
- text alignment
- The setting of a text flow or image placement relative to a page
- tone
- the particular quality of brightness, deepness, or hue of a tint or shade of a color.
- tracking
- Adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters
- two-color process
- Printing process utilizing two colors of ink. Two-color printing is less costly than four-color process printing. The two-color combinations most often used include yellow-magenta, yellow-cyan, cyan-magenta, yellow-black, magenta-black, and cyan-black. The colors are combined in varying proportions toachieve different hues.
- type design
- The art and process of designing typefaces
- type size
- The measure of a type’s height in points
- typeface
- A set of characters that share common characteristics such as stroke width and the presence or absence of serifs
- typeset
- Arrange the type or process the data for (text that is to be printed)
- typestyle
- Variations within a typeface
- typographic hierarchy
- The use of size, weight, placement, and spacing to express the parts of a page or document and their relative importance
- typography
- the style and appearance of printed matter; the art or procedure of arranging type or processing data and printing from it.
- uppercase
- Uppercase characters are capital letters; lowercase characters are small letters. For example, box is in lowercase while BOX is in uppercase.
- vector
- denoting a type of graphical representation using straight lines to construct the outlines of objects.
- vector image
- Image made up of points connected along a curve (or vector)
- word spacing
- In a line of text, this is the amount of space between each word
