Ligature

A form of typographic ornament used by a type designer for decorative purposes. Common ligatures are based on joining two or more letters together, often with figures embedded in the design

More terms you might want to know

Lowercase

The designation of a set of character encoding styles for glyphs that are not capital letters.

Material Design

A design language developed by Google. The goal of Material Design was to create fluid, natural movement for users on any platform they happen to be using.

Soft Return

Also called a line break, when you want to keep the text in one paragraph and not follow it with an airy space.

Ball Terminal

In handwriting and calligraphy, ball terminals are the end of a stroke that resembles a ball. They are also used in some typefaces like cursive or old-style typefaces.

Brand Identity

The perception that people have of a business and its reliability, authenticity, and attractiveness. It's also the set of impressions an individual has when they think about a brand.

Heuristic Evaluation

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.

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).

Onboarding Flow

The process of a new user being brought in to a new product. The design for this process aims to have an effective, efficient, and engaging user experience.

User Scenario

An example of a typical user and the actions they take. Typically these are written in the form of a story.

System Font

A type of font that comes pre-installed in an operating system.

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