Crop

A portion of an image where the remainder is discarded.

More terms you might want to know

GIF

A file format that supports both static and animated images. It is a popular file format on the internet and social media due to its wide colour support, portability, and animating capabilities.

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.

Style Guide

A group of rules, guidelines, and/or standards designers use when producing artwork or branded projects ensuring that they have the desired appearance and are compliant with usage guidelines.

System Font

A type of font that comes pre-installed in an operating system.

Cool Colours

Colours on the opposite side of the colour wheel to warm colours. Typically bluish in tone, such as blue or green.

Fitts' Law

A prediction model used in human-computer interaction. It states that the time required to move to a target area rapidly increases as the distance to the target increases. The law was proposed by Paul Fitts, an American psychologist, in 1954 as a mathematical model of movement with limited cognitive capacity.

Fitts hypothesized that one would quickly select its first apparent target when reaching for an object before considering alternatives — a phenomenon called "target fixation." This tendency would increase progressively with increased distance between the subject and object until it eventually became exponential (i.e., too far away).

Quick Keys or Shortcuts

A Shortcut is a computer function that performs a set of commands to save time. A Quick Key is a keyboard shortcut used to trigger an action.

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.

Affinity Diagram

A data visualisation tool that can be used to explore and group people's thoughts or reactions to a set of concepts. Affinity diagrams are often used in user research and design thinking as an experimental technique for generating new ideas or solutions.

The emergent patterns in these visual representations can help identify which aspects your audience will respond well to, thus enabling decisions on the information architecture and next steps in the process.

It is important to note that affinity diagrams were initially developed for qualitative research but have since been adapted for quantitative research (though they are not typically used with statistical data).

Copy

The written information that accompanies a design.

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