x-height

The distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Nearby descenders (such as j) and ascenders (such as q) usually extend slightly below or above this height.

More terms you might want to know

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.

Monospace

A style of typeface that uses a width-to-height ratio of 1:1.

RAW Image

A digital image captured by a digital camera or scanner that has not been processed in any way by the camera software.

Hero Image

The primary graphic that appears at the top of a webpage, designed to grab people's attention.

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.

Uppercase

Also known as caps, a type property that specifies that all letters in a body of text are capitalised.

AI File

An Adobe Illustrator vector format file. Files with the extension .ai are often used for artwork and illustrations as users can resize them without distortion. It is composed of several layers with objects and text on each layer. Users can import Illustrator files into many other programs like InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop etc. If you design or print your t-shirts, you can create your designs in Illustrator and apply them to your t-shirt using a heat press.

Typesetting

The process of arranging type to make written material readable. The arrangement of type involves decisions about individual letters and words (e.g. line spacing, letter spacing, and word spacing) and more significant page layout decisions (e.g., margins, headline position on the page).

Terminal

The end (straight or curved) of any stroke that doesn’t include a serif. Some typefaces feature ball terminals on letters such as the ‘f’, ‘a’, and ‘c’.

Landing Page

A standalone web page with content intended to capture a visitor. Often, it has the same URL as the website's home page and is used in paid or sponsored search engine marketing (known more commonly as pay-per-click) advertising campaigns.

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