Art & Digital Design - Terms Exam Study Guide

A collection of important terms and definitions related to art and digital design, focusing on design and typography, color theory, and photography.

Cap Height

The height of the capital letters in a block of type.

Visual Center

The area an image is placed for balance that is slightly above center.

Initial Cap

The decorative, bold, and larger letter that appears at the beginning of a line or paragraph.

White Space

The unused portion of the page where there is no type, photo, or graphic.

Alignment

The style in which lines of type are stacked, such as flush left, flush right, justified, or centered.

Leading

The space between baselines or individual lines of type.

Kerning

Adjusting the space between two letters.

Tracking

The space between words in a line of type that can be manipulated to change line length.

Descender

The part of a letter that goes below the baseline.

Widow

A word left by itself on a line at the end of a paragraph in a column.

Color Vibration

The effect when colors appear to be moving when a warm color and a cool color are juxtaposed.

Primary Colors

The main colors from which other colors are created; in traditional color theory, they are red, yellow, and blue.

Subtractive Process

The process when all colors of pigment are mixed together to make black.

Additive Process

The process of mixing all colors to make white light.

Rule of Thirds

Principle of composition suggesting the most important features of a photograph fall along two imaginary vertical & horizontal lines that separate the height & length into thirds.

Shutter Speed

Controls how long light is allowed to expose an image, measured in fractions of seconds.

ISO Speed

A rating of a film's sensitivity to light; in digital cameras, it describes the sensitivity of the imaging sensor.

Depth of Field

The distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appears acceptably sharp in an image.

Vector File

A file format suitable for producing graphics and designs with scalable images, often created in programs like Adobe Illustrator.

JPEG

A common file format for compressing images, typically used for low-resolution pictures.

GIF

A file format that supports animation, great for animated web images.

Markup Guidelines

Guidelines in artwork prepared for printing that won't print.

E-Scale

A chart that designers often use for measuring type.