Saturation

The intensity of a color relative to its own brightness. Colours are said to be saturated when they have a strong hue and high intensity.

More terms you might want to know

Design Debt

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.

Rule of Thirds

A rule of thumb used in photography to create more visually appealing images which states that an image should be composed so that the subject or focus of the image occupies one-third of the picture space, with two equal vertical lines dividing their composition into two.

Raster

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

Type Classification

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

RGB

Red, green, and blue. These colours can be used to form a wide variety of colours in different devices such as computer monitors and televisions.

Abstract Mark

An abstract mark is a type of logo where instead of being a recognizable object from everyday life, it is an abstract geometric form representing a business or brand. Famous examples include the BP starburst logo, and the Pepsi divided circle.

Carousel

A series of slides that are positioned one after the other. As you scroll through the images, the next image in the sequence is automatically loaded. Once you scroll to the end of the carousel, it cycles back around like a horse on a circular track.

Character

A letter, symbol, or another alphabet unit.

Microcopy

The small, non-essential text that appears on an interface. It has been set up specifically to be short and concise to draw attention to an essential user experience.

Layout

Layout is a defining characteristic of design. It dictates the positioning of content and design elements. Layouts can range from the simple, such as a four- or two-column layout, to more complex designs like grids with multiple hierarchy levels.

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