A decoration technique used primarily on paper, metal, and some plastics in which ink or another printing medium is pressed into the material's surface to create a three-dimensional effect.
A small picture or design that represents an idea, function, or some other type of visual concept. For example, in computer graphics and web development, an icon is a pictorial representation of a program or file type.
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.
A name, symbol or other distinctive feature that distinguishes one business's product from another's, often associated with a logo, design, slogan and other items.
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).
The attributes of a typeface. Type properties include weight, width, colour and x-height.
All available space (line-height) between two consecutive lines of text; this measurement should be adjusted for either ascenders or descenders. In hand typesetting, leading referred to thin strips of lead inserted by hand between lines of type in the composing stick to increase vertical distance.
Also called a line break, when you want to keep the text in one paragraph and not follow it with an airy space.
The design of the interaction between users and products. Interaction design is focused on creating products that enable the user to achieve their objective(s) in the best way possible.
A measure of the ease of understanding text.
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.