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.

More terms you might want to know

Agile Design

A process that involves assigning people to work on different parts of the design and making sure that they focus on one area at a time. This method is an excellent way to release products more quickly and with higher quality.

The most common types of agile methods are Scrum, Kanban, XP and Agile Modeling. It can often be difficult for companies to make the switch because it requires significant changes in how product development occurs.

Crop

A portion of an image where the remainder is discarded.

Type Properties

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

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.

Lorem Ipsum

A type of text used as filler or placeholder text. Since the dawn of time, it has been around and is sometimes erroneously referred to as "a nonsense sentence used by printers who have run out of typesetting space".

Contrast

Contrast in design can be accomplished by placing two opposite colours adjacent to one another, creating a focal point within the design that dominates the composition.

Slab Serif

A type of serif, characterized by large x-heights and thick, blocky strokes with little variation in width.

PNG Image

A PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file is a bitmap image format that has been designed to store images with an alpha channel. This format is primarily used for transparency so that it can be placed over other graphics in many design applications.

Hierarchy

Also known as visual hierarchy, hierarchy is the ordering of priorities in a design. This may include different visual elements, such as contrast, colour, font size and placement on a page. The graphic designer's job is to create an understandable document using organisational systems that the reader easily understands.

User Flow

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

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