Sketching

A basic design tool that helps designers create and communicate ideas.

More terms you might want to know

Style Guide

A group of rules, guidelines, and/or standards designers use when producing artwork or branded projects ensuring that they have the desired appearance and are compliant with usage guidelines.

Negative Space

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

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.

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.

Balance

The principle of both sides of an object having a sense of symmetry. It ensures that the weight and visual mass are distributed evenly on both sides of a surface. Balance is more important than symmetry because people don't often notice when something is asymmetrical, but they will always see if something is unbalanced.

User Flow

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

Legibility

How well or poorly something can be read.

Point Size

A unit for defining the size of a font. It's not a distance; this unit's measurement is only relative to the typeface's design.

Calligraphy

The art of decorative writing practised by many different people in many different cultures. Calligraphy is sometimes used to add a personal touch to wedding invitations, special event invitations, and other projects.

Diary Study

A technique for understanding people’s experience of a product or service. Participants are asked to keep daily records of their experience using the product, and these records are taken into consideration when designing the design.

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