Hand-lettering

The art of drawing original characters and symbols — especially for decorative purposes.

More terms you might want to know

DPI

The print resolution of a printer. It's a measure of how many dots per inch can be printed on paper. Higher DPI means more detail and smoother transitions between colours.

Type Classification

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

Mood board

A collage consisting of images, colours and text that is assembled to convey an idea or theme.

x-height

The distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Nearby descenders (such as j) and ascenders (such as q) usually extend slightly below or above this height.

Design Thinking

An iterative process that designers use to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine the problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. Design Thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on methods.

Pilcrow

Also called a paragraph mark, a paragraph sign or section marker, is a typographical character for separating paragraphs. It looks like a "¶".

Font Case

The way characters are capitalised within a word or phrase. Common font cases are uppercase, lowercase, capitalised (or title case) and sentence case.

Pixel

A pixel, or a picture element, is the smallest addressable element in a display device.

Thumbnail Sketch

A quick and rough sketch of what you are about to work on. Good for getting the ideas out of your head and onto the page while you're still in that creative phase.

Hierarchy

Also known as visual hierarchy, hierarchy is the ordering of priorities in a design. This may include different visual elements, such as contrast, colour, font size and placement on a page. The graphic designer's job is to create an understandable document using organisational systems that the reader easily understands.

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