A set of colors which can be used to create a particular visual effect. It is usually composed of multiple primary, secondary, and tertiary colours.
Also known as visual hierarchy, hierarchy is the ordering of priorities in a design. This may include different visual elements, such as contrast, colour, font size and placement on a page. The graphic designer's job is to create an understandable document using organisational systems that the reader easily understands.
The distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Nearby descenders (such as j) and ascenders (such as q) usually extend slightly below or above this height.
Affordances describe a relationship between the environment and an animate object, classified as either positive or negative.
Items, such as a car that leads to movement, have a positive affordance. Things like stairs that lead upwards have a negative affordance because they will not allow for any other form of movement other than up or down if used accordingly.
A print that the printer receives to monitor the progress of production. Proofing is a matter of looking at the print to ensure that it has been printed correctly and that the colours are rendered accurately.
The way characters are capitalised within a word or phrase. Common font cases are uppercase, lowercase, capitalised (or title case) and sentence case.
A philosophy that companies should take a user-centred approach to design, making sure they focus on the customer's needs and not on their company's needs. UX designers need to figure out what users want before building something and not after. They must also ask themselves if including "features" will provide any value to the product or service.
The Pantone Matching System is a colour-matching system for printing inks. It is a proprietary colour-matching system that was developed so that when an artist picks PMS colour or swatch, they can be confident in knowing what colours would be produced no matter the application.
A sequence of user actions on a website. In UX design, it's important to note the order in which users interact with your site so you can redesign it for optimum usability.
A low-fidelity representation of a user interface design.
The process of developing a product or design system that can be altered to fit different device and interaction contexts.