Balance

The principle of both sides of an object having a sense of symmetry. It ensures that the weight and visual mass are distributed evenly on both sides of a surface. Balance is more important than symmetry because people don't often notice when something is asymmetrical, but they will always see if something is unbalanced.

More terms you might want to know

Trim Size

The width and height of a document, after having been cut down to size from a larger sheet.

Hero Image

The primary graphic that appears at the top of a webpage, designed to grab people's attention.

Monospace

A style of typeface that uses a width-to-height ratio of 1:1.

Close-Crop

Framing consisting of cutting off or obscuring most of the surrounding of a subject, removing distractions from the background and emphasising the subject.

User Interface (UI)

A type of graphical interface that allows the user to interact with the application on a screen, such as a computer monitor or smartphone, using various types of input devices.

Design Debt

A concept used in systems design to describe the negative consequences of making seemingly innocuous design changes. Shorthand for a product's delayed but inevitable need to be reworked due to earlier, seemingly trivial decisions not having been fully thought through in the original release.

Designers incur this "debt" by making quick and easy choices that save time in the present but cause more complex problems later on down the road when it becomes necessary to change or add something.

PSD File

A digital file created in Adobe's illustration and photo manipulation software Photoshop. PSD files are used to edit images, create graphics, art, icons, images, among a plethora of other things.

HTML

A language used to create web pages, and it stands for Hypertext Markup Language.

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.

Font Size

A measure of the height of a set of text on an element.

Problem?

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