If you’re young and want to go into graphic design, or even if you want to reinvent yourself and change careers (yes, it’s never too late to do what you enjoy or learn new things!) you might feel a little intimidated by the plethora of specific terms used by graphic design specialists.
Although when you first take your first steps in this field the specific jargon can be a little confusing, mastering these terms will not only help you communicate more easily and effectively with other designers, but will also help you to be able to describe your work more accurately.
The following is a list of the most popular graphic design words and phrases to give you a basis for developing as a graphic designer.
The most popular words and phrases you need to know
Here, then, is an essential list of the most important graphic design terms to know. To help you familiarise yourself with them we will describe them in turn.
- Design: composition and layout, balance, alignment, repetition, contrast, rule of thirds, grid, hierarchy
- Photo and illustrations: resolution, DPI, PPI, pixels, crop
- Type: fonts, lorem ipsum
- Colour: colour study, hue, tone, shade, saturation, gradient, opacity, CMYK, RGB
- Website elements: header, navigation bar, banner, footer, HTML
Design
- Composition and layout: composition is the way the elements of the image are arranged. A good composition attracts attention and makes the viewer follow the design. Most often, the composition will be called a layout and is made up of several elements, arranged according to different criteria including balance and proportions as well as criteria related to the visual identity of the brand, the message and the type of graphic design.
- Balance: as with works of art, a painting for example, balance is the result of the placement of the different elements that make up the overall picture. The balance is threefold:
– Symmetrical: symmetry is achieved when all the elements that make up the overall image (design) are equal on both sides of an imaginary centre line
– Asymmetric: when graphic elements are not equal on both sides of a central line
– Radial: when design elements radiate from a central point
- Alignment: this term refers to the position of text or graphic elements
- Repetition: to achieve a unified look of the overall image, elements are usually repeated within a design
- Contrast: this results from the inclusion of different elements in the design. A designer can achieve contrast by using: shapes, textures, colours or font sizes
- Rule of thirds: this is a technique to determine the focal point. Applying a grid of three rows and three columns over the design, the focal points are where the lines converge. It is a technique designed to determine the placement of important elements in the design
- Grid: this term determines a series of intersecting vertical, horizontal, oblique or curved lines and is used to determine the placement of graphic elements on a page or in relation to each other
- Hierarchy: as you may have realised, hierarchy is the order in which items are placed in order of importance, as for example in the case of a movie poster or a magazine cover.
Photo and illustrations
- Resolution: this is the sharpness of the image in terms of the number of pixels
- DPI or dots per inch: is a criterion used to define the quality of a printed image. For a good quality image we recommend, for example, 300dpi
- PPI or pixels per inch: measures the pixel density of various electronic devices such as a camera or scanner
- Pixels: these are the small squares that make up a digital image, the higher the number of pixels, the better the image resolution
- Crop: this term means “cropping”, i.e. the process of removing parts of an image to improve framing or highlight an element
- Font types: most fonts fall into one of four main types: serif (where serif refers to the small details at the end of certain letters), sans serif (a font without serifs), script (these fonts have a cursive line), weak serif (font with thick serifs)
- Lorem ipsum or dummy text: this is used for simulations and then replaced by real text
Colour
- The study of colour is the study of the effects of colour on a person’s mood and on a design. It is used in graphic design to determine which colours and shades work best in different situations and for different purposes.
- Hue, hue, shade: hue is pure colour, shade is a hue to which grey is added, and a shade is a hue to which black is added
- Saturation: this term is used to define colour intensity
- Gradient: this is a slow transition from one shade to another through many intermediate shades
- Opacity: this means lack of transparency, the lower the opacity, the more transparent an image is
- CMYK: defines a printing process based on combinations of four colours: cyan, magenta, yellow and black
- RGB: stands for red, green and blue, i.e. the three colours used to display images in digital format
Website elements
- Header: is that design element that is repeated at the top of every page
- Navigation bar: a set of repeated links on each page that link to relevant and important information on the site
- Banners: these are usually at the top or side and contain advertisements to other websites
- Footer: design elements that are repeated at the bottom of each page
- HTML: stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, a standard coding language for websites in which fonts, colours, graphics and links are generated