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.
A greater typographic weight than the standard typeface, often used to highlight text that the writer wants to emphasise or denote sections, headlines or quotes in printed material.
Bold type is a little heavier than the average type because of its higher contrast, making it more readable. The opposite of bold type is light type, also known as regular or book.
A symbol that is used in the design industry to give a more personal touch. Lettermarks can be an individual's name or initials that are cleverly designed and incorporated into a company's logo.
A PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file is a bitmap image format that has been designed to store images with an alpha channel. This format is primarily used for transparency so that it can be placed over other graphics in many design applications.
The unused or empty space in a composition of images, either two-dimensional (as with paintings) or three-dimensional (as with sculptures).
The distance between two points of extrusion or an object. It can also be defined as the measurement of size.
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.
The ratio of a rectangle's width to its height. It is measured by dividing the shorter side length, here "w" or width, by the longer side length, "h" or height. The aspect ratio may be given as either a fraction or as a decimal.
The word "bracket" is often used to refer to parentheses and is written as either [] or () and used to delimit blocks of text, e.g. a set of instructions. Within brackets, items are arranged from left to right in order of precedence.
A well-known UI element in computer applications. It's an expandable menu of context-specific commands typically launched from the application's main menu.
A usability assessment method that is used to evaluate a design against established usability principles or heuristics. It is based on the idea that designers can use their experience to find areas of poor design without extensive user testing.