Serif

The small decorative stroke at the end of a stroke in a letter, or a typeface.

More terms you might want to know

Leading

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.

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.

Affordance

Affordances describe a relationship between the environment and an animate object, classified as either positive or negative.

Items, such as a car that leads to movement, have a positive affordance. Things like stairs that lead upwards have a negative affordance because they will not allow for any other form of movement other than up or down if used accordingly.

Empathy Map

A way of researching users and understanding their behaviour in the context of the product, helping designers in understanding users' needs and expectations and what motivates them to act.

Designers can use this type of research to understand better their users and what kinds of experiences they are looking for. And this will allow the designers better empathize with their users, making them a part of the learning cycle.

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.

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.

JPEG Image

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Expert Group, an international standards body that sets standards for creating and handling compressed digital images. The JPEG file format was designed to balance good visual quality and small file size, typically through lossy compression. The JPEG file format is widely used as a means of compressing digital images, particularly those produced by digital cameras.

ID

A selector that can be applied to any HTML element. ID should be used when designing for a single instance, such as using the id="main" attribute on an <h1> tag.

Embossing

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.

Type Properties

The attributes of a typeface. Type properties include weight, width, colour and x-height.

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