Information Architecture

The art and science of arranging information so that it's intuitive to find, easy to navigate, presents a cohesive design, meets accessibility guidelines, looks attractive on any device or screen size and ultimately drives behaviour change.

More terms you might want to know

Trim Size

The width and height of a document, after having been cut down to size from a larger sheet.

Negative Space

The unused or empty space in a composition of images, either two-dimensional (as with paintings) or three-dimensional (as with sculptures).

Hick's Law

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.

Texture

The surface quality of an element.

User Flow

The way that a user navigates through a website, app, etc.

User Interface (UI)

A type of graphical interface that allows the user to interact with the application on a screen, such as a computer monitor or smartphone, using various types of input devices.

Avatar

A graphical representation of the user on a device, used to represent various users in different contexts. It can be a photo, image or drawing.

Typesetting

The process of arranging type to make written material readable. The arrangement of type involves decisions about individual letters and words (e.g. line spacing, letter spacing, and word spacing) and more significant page layout decisions (e.g., margins, headline position on the page).

AI File

An Adobe Illustrator vector format file. Files with the extension .ai are often used for artwork and illustrations as users can resize them without distortion. It is composed of several layers with objects and text on each layer. Users can import Illustrator files into many other programs like InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop etc. If you design or print your t-shirts, you can create your designs in Illustrator and apply them to your t-shirt using a heat press.

Raster

Commonly used to describe a 2D graphic that is made up of an organized grid of pixels, in other words, a bitmap.

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