Scribd
Upload
78 views

Glossary Redo

Uploaded by

api-264944421
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
78 views

Glossary Redo

Uploaded by

api-264944421
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

This GRAPHIC DESIGN GLOSSARY contains vocabulary that many designers use on a daily basis and may be confus-

ing to new designers or non-designers who need to communicate with designers. Remember, the following terms
are defined as they relate to graphic design and desktop publishing.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
GLOSSARY
AI Illustrator Document extension.
Bleed Bleed is the part of a print-
ed document that is outside the
bounds of the final size of the piece.
It is used to make sure images and
other design elements print all the
way to the edge of the paper. It is
the designers responsibility to set
up the bleed in a document and an
accepted standard is 1p6, or 1/4
of an inch, outside the size of the
paper. When placing objects in a
document that must go all the way
to the edge of the page, make sure
they extend to at least this quarter
inch mark. Photoshop and Illustrator
do not have an automatic way to
add bleed, so it must be taken into
account when setting up the page
size. In layout programs such as In-
Design, the bleed is set up separate-
ly from the actual page size; in other
words, the bleed is in addition to the
defined page size.
CMYK CMYK stands for Cyan, Ma-
genta, Yellow and Black, the colors
a printer works with, as opposed to
the screen color space, RGB. This is
also known as process color. CMYK
is a subtractive color space; in oth-
er words, to make white, you take
away all the colors.
Compression The process of an
algorithm making file sizes smaller
by combining similar data. Most of
the time this is a good thing, but it
can also cause severe loss of quality,
especially in regards to images.
Comps Also known as compre-
hensives, these are the step after
thumbnails in the creative process.
This is usually where the designs
are taken into the computer and the
details such as backgrounds, color
schemes and images are more thor-
oughly worked out. Comps are the
first draft of design. Many times
designers show several different
styles in comps to a client and let the
client decide on a look and feel that
he or she desires. Then the comps go
back to the designer with some feed-
back and changes from the client
and usually several rounds of this
feedback process occur. Sometimes
the client may ask (or the designer
may want to present) mock-ups.
DPI Dots per inch is the more exact
way to define the resolution for a
file that is to be printed. Some use
DPI and PPI interchangeably, though
this is technically incorrect.
Elements of Design The
Elements of Design are Color, Shape,
Size, Space, Line, Value and Texture
EPS EPS stands for Encapsulated
PostScript (not to be confused with
ESP: Extra Sensory Perception). A
common file format for exporting
Illustrator files, it contains a bitmap
preview of the image as well as in-
structions written in the PostScript
language that describe how the
object is to be printed.
Font Technically, a font is the com-
plete collection of characters and
glyphs, including numbers, symbols,
accented characters, punctuation
marks, etc. in a given face design. A
font also includes the design in vari-
ous weights, such as bold or italic; it
is more comprehensive and compli-
cated to design than a typeface.
Freehand Freehand is the Macro-
media equivalent of Adobe Illustra-
tor.
Fireworks Fireworks is the Mac-
romedia equivalent of Adobe Photo-
shop.
Ghosting Also known as screen-
ing back, it is where an image is
made transparent so that the back-
ground shows through.
GIF A proprietary file format from
CompuServe. It is used in web graph-
ics and is best for images that are
made of solid colors, like logos. GIFs
support transparency (however, pix-
els are either transparent or opaque,
nothing in between) and they can be
animated. GIFs are also considered
a lossless formatmeaning they do
not suffer compression artifactsas
long as they do not exceed 256 col-
ors.
Gradient A gradient is a fade
from one color to another. There
are many shapes a gradient can
take, but generally it is either linear
(straight) or radial (round, where
it fades from the center outwards).
Gradients can also be highly cus-
tomized with many different color
patterns so that it is difficult to tell
if an object actually has a gradient.
Generally gradients are used to add
depth, or sometimes a shiny or me-
tallic look, to a design element, but
they can also be used simply to color
an object.
Page | 1

You might also like