A small, non-preview image that accompanies a larger image. It provides an immediate sense of the content while not necessarily revealing it in its entire scope.
A Tagged Image File Format is a file format for storing images losslessly.
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.
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.
Colours on the opposite side of the colour wheel to warm colours. Typically bluish in tone, such as blue or green.
A way of developing new products or services using a process of repeated and regular refinement, in which prototypes are made, evaluated, revised, and re-evaluated until the desired result is achieved. High profile companies have successfully implemented iterative design to create effective and innovative products.
The measure of a device or computer system's ability to capture fine detail. A higher number of pixels can provide more details and finer images on the screen.
The unused or empty space in a composition of images, either two-dimensional (as with paintings) or three-dimensional (as with sculptures).
Also known as the divine proportion, is a number, or a ratio, sometimes approximated by phi and widely considered aesthetically pleasing. The golden ratio has been featured in nature and art in many ways, including hexagonal honeycombs, the human body, and mathematics. More frequently, it is used in design and digital art to represent a path (or steps) one can take to achieve a particular look or result. In art, an artist may produce something (a painting or drawing, for example) using the golden ratio as a basis for its composition.
A printing term that describes how close an object is to the edge of a printed page. Bleeds are often used in graphic design for books, magazines, posters and other printed materials with photographs or illustrations.
A way to create and test designs. Designers use design sprints as a time-intensive method of quickly testing ideas and then pivoting into designing for user needs. A designer may then take the prototype they created on the first day of the design sprint and fix any usability issues with it, which is a quick way to get feedback on their work before continuing development.