Bowl

In typography, a bowl is a curved shape used to control the area of white space.

More terms you might want to know

Stroke

The path of any movement, mark, shape, or other feature of a design. It can be the border of an element or even the tight edge of a text box, etc.

Orphan

One or more words (typically at the end of a paragraph) that are separated from the rest of the text. Orphans are generally thought of as bad design, but it’s a matter of taste.

x-height

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.

CMYK

CMYK is a colour space created for the printing process. It stands for Cyan Magenta Yellow Key (black).

Raster

Commonly used to describe a 2D graphic that is made up of an organized grid of pixels, in other words, a bitmap.

Baseline

An imaginary line on which most letters "sit". As such, it equals the height of an em square. The expected result of a baseline is to reference the height with which text is aligned. The alignment ranges from ascenders, which are the upper strokes in b, d, and h, down to descenders like j or y.

Serial Position Effect

A phenomenon in psychology in which recalling items in a list imposes an order on the list, with the first and last items remembered best. That is, if given a list of words to remember like "dog apple tree", people will tend to recall "dog" as being at the beginning of the sentence and "tree" as being at the end of it.

Pagination

A technique used to sequentially present items in a list or other data set that are too long to display at one time.

Storyboard

A graphical representation of a scenario, usually created and presented in sequence.

Letterpress

A printing press that uses movable type and punches to make impressions on paper.

Problem?

Got a suggestion or found an issue with the glossary?
Let me know!