Ball Terminal

In handwriting and calligraphy, ball terminals are the end of a stroke that resembles a ball. They are also used in some typefaces like cursive or old-style typefaces.

More terms you might want to know

Proximity

The placement or otherwise of a thing in relation to other things. In design, proximity may be considered as the distance between two items in space or their relative location to each other.

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.

Typeface Design

The art and discipline of putting together set of typefaces into a harmonious and readable type system. A typeface designer spends much time considering many things such as clear visual message, readability at different sizes, legibility at small point sizes, ease of use for printing processes on its own or over the top of other fonts.

Monospace

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

PDF File

An abbreviation for Portable Document Format. The PDF format was originally developed to share documents between different operating systems in the late 1980s. Any text document, image or page layout can be saved as a PDF file that includes all of the font information needed to display it without losing quality.

Copy

The written information that accompanies a design.

Gamification

The process of adding game-like qualities to an experience like a website or application. To ensure that these activities are engaging enough for the users, it often includes gradual rewards such as levels and badges systems, which can further encourage engagement with the app.

Symmetry

The arrangement of different elements in relation to each other so that they appear to be mirrored. Symmetrical designs can be found throughout art and architecture, as well as in nature.

Type Classification

A system used to describe and identify typefaces by their basic visual characteristics.

Rule of Thirds

A rule of thumb used in photography to create more visually appealing images which states that an image should be composed so that the subject or focus of the image occupies one-third of the picture space, with two equal vertical lines dividing their composition into two.

Problem?

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