Demystifying Design Jargon
If you’ve ever worked with a designer or a printer, you might feel like they’re speaking another language sometimes. Kerning? CTA? RGB? Why are there so many acronyms??
We’ve all felt this way.
Over here at Rachel Brands, I’m all about helping folks feel included and communicate more effectively. So today, I’m making a list of commonly-used terms that might come up, whether you’re working with me, another designer, or a printer.
And while I try to speak in layman’s terms most of the time, these are great words to know and you’ll be able to impress your non-designer friends at your next dinner party with your shiny, new design knowledge. Let’s dive in!
Bleed
In print design, when color is meant to fill an entire page edge-to-edge, a ‘bleed’ is the additional background or color that extends beyond the page (typically 1/8 to 1/4 inch). This allows the printer to manually crop off the edges after a piece is printed, giving a ‘full bleed’ effect of color or a photo going off the sides.
Body Copy
The main typographic content of a piece, whether it’s a book, magazine, website, or other design. It’s what makes up the bulk of the paragraphs, blocks of text, chapters, etc.
Camera Ready
A less commonly-used term nowadays, but this refers to artwork or a document that is final and ready for print production (a clearer term would be ‘printer’ ready).
CMYK
The acronym for the 4-color printing process – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (or ‘Key’ plate). These 4 colors are printed on top of one another in dots (see DPI – dots per inch) that create a vast spectrum of colors for print production.
Complementary Colors
opposite colors on the color wheel. Often a good method to creating a color palette that works in harmony and balance.
Crop Marks
In print design, when a document is ‘full bleed’ (see ‘Bleed’ above), crop marks are printed to indicate where the printer will slice of the edges of the paper or document to create the final size.
CTA
Call to Action. A prominent part of a design indicating what your audience should do next: click a button, make a phone call, schedule an appointment, make a purchase, etc.
Die Cut
A process and method by which a print design is cut into a specific shape, usually for extra ‘wow’ factor.
Display Font
A typeface used for large type, like headlines, billboards, and banners.
DPI
Dots Per Inch. Used to describe how clearly (or pixelated) an image will print. The higher the dots per inch, the sharper the image. Print designs must be a minimum of 300dpi, as well as the photos within them. 72dpi is standard for web design.
Glyph
A single character in a font; a number, letter, mark or symbol.
Italic
A typeface style within the larger font family that is angled to the right (and often more calligraphic in style), unlike their upright primary counterparts (‘romans’).
Kerning
The increasing/decreasing of space between two letters, often done manually in logos to make sure everything is optically balanced.
Leading
Pronounced “ledding” – the space between lines of type. Generally, the smaller the type, the looser the leading, the larger the type, the tighter the leading. Originates from metal typesetting, when physical lead bars were used to space out metal lines of type before printing.
Letterpress
A special, technical print process for high-end design pieces, in which designs are printed using an inked, raised metal surface, that typically leaves a raised impression on the paper.
Lorem Ipsum
The traditional placeholder Latin words/blocks of dummy text that designers use to help mockup a layout to give a general idea of the final look, before copy is finalized.
Margins
The edge or space around a paragraph or page of a design.
Negative Space (or white space)
The area of a design that's free of content, used to balance a design and give it breathing room.
Opacity
How transparent an object, element, or image is, denoted as a percentage.
Portable Document Format. High-res PDFs are the print industry standard for printing.
PMS
Pantone Matching System. A robust collection of (pre-canned) colors that can be matched exactly by each printer with little/no variation. The standard, universal color system among printers; especially useful when multiple brand print pieces need to be exactly the same color.
Raster
Images (like photographs) created using a grid of thousands / millions of tiny, colored squares known as pixels. When raster images are scaled larger, they lose resolution, unlike vector graphics (see ‘Vector’).
RGB
Red, Green, Blue. The color gamut used for most digital and web designs (along with ‘Hex’ codes). Should be translated to CMYK before printing.
Saddle Stitched
A document printing technique where pages are printed, folded in half, and stapled together down the middle.
Serif and Sans Serif
A ‘serif’ is a small ‘foot’ or horizontal stroke connected to the main stroke(s) of a letter. ‘Serif’ fonts have them, ‘Sans Serif’ fonts do not. Generally speaking, serif fonts feel more traditional, and sans serif fonts have a more modern feel (although this is very general, and there are many exceptions).
Signature
In printing, a single sheet of paper folded in half to create 4 distinct pages (left, right, front, back). Most multipage print pieces are created using ‘signatures’ saddle-stitched (or stapled) together. Therefore, most long form print pieces must have a page count that is multiples of four.
Title Case
Setting a headline or sentence so that every word is capitalized.
UX
User Experience. I.e., “the UX needs to be as seamless as possible for our customers.”
Vector
Digital graphics defined by a mathematical formula of points, lines, and curves; as opposed to pixels (see ‘Raster’). Vectors are infinitely scalable, allowing them to be resized from business cards to billboards without losing quality, and as such are the preferred format for logos and brand graphics.
Wordmark
The portion of a logo that is typographic. Some logos are only wordmarks, some are a combo of wordmark and icon.
Congratulations – you’re well on your way to becoming a bonafide graphic designer! But if you can’t remember everything all at once, bookmark this handy guide for the next time you’re working with a designer. Cheers!
Want someone to demystify the design process too? If you’re looking for a magical brand (without all the jargon), send me an owl and your Fairy Brandmother will magically appear in your inbox to learn all about your business goals and brand dreams.