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

Mood board

A collage consisting of images, colours and text that is assembled to convey an idea or theme.

Copy

The written information that accompanies a design.

Pantone (PMS)

The Pantone Matching System is a colour-matching system for printing inks. It is a proprietary colour-matching system that was developed so that when an artist picks PMS colour or swatch, they can be confident in knowing what colours would be produced no matter the application.

Letterpress

A printing press that uses movable type and punches to make impressions on paper.

Fitts' Law

A prediction model used in human-computer interaction. It states that the time required to move to a target area rapidly increases as the distance to the target increases. The law was proposed by Paul Fitts, an American psychologist, in 1954 as a mathematical model of movement with limited cognitive capacity.

Fitts hypothesized that one would quickly select its first apparent target when reaching for an object before considering alternatives — a phenomenon called "target fixation." This tendency would increase progressively with increased distance between the subject and object until it eventually became exponential (i.e., too far away).

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.

Cap Height

The distance from the baseline to the top of a capital letter, number, or other upper-case glyphs.

Icon

A small picture or design that represents an idea, function, or some other type of visual concept. For example, in computer graphics and web development, an icon is a pictorial representation of a program or file type.

User Interviews

The act of gathering qualitative data about a person's thoughts and feelings related to a product.

Scale

The distance between two points of extrusion or an object. It can also be defined as the measurement of size.

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