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.
The surface quality of an element.
A triad is a group of three colours that are equally spaced on the colour wheel.
A well-known cognitive psychologist's principle that says that the time it takes to make a decision varies logarithmically according to the number of choices. As more options are presented, more decision time is required due to the mental work of comparing and contrasting each potential option.
Designers and developers use font styles to denote differences in meaning between two or more words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or blocks of text. Typical font styles in CSS and web development are normal, italic, oblique and inherit.
A printing term that describes how close an object is to the edge of a printed page. Bleeds are often used in graphic design for books, magazines, posters and other printed materials with photographs or illustrations.
An organised arrangement of elements used for a particular purpose, such as to create striking visual effects or to convey information effectively. Good composition is achieved through different methods, such as placing figures or objects in a scene, revising and simplifying lines and shapes that make up a figure, and arranging multiple figures or objects into meaningful relationships.
A unit for defining the size of a font. It's not a distance; this unit's measurement is only relative to the typeface's design.
Red, green, and blue. These colours can be used to form a wide variety of colours in different devices such as computer monitors and televisions.
The use of design features that are shaped to resemble a familiar object or thing in order to facilitate user interaction.
The primary graphic that appears at the top of a webpage, designed to grab people's attention.