Design and Typography Vocabulary

Vocabulary terms covering basic typography, vector illustration, digital computing units, and page layout terminology based on the lecture notes.

Sans serif

from the French, meaning “without serif”. A typeface which has no serifs

Serif

Tapered corners on the ends of the main stroke. Serifs originated from chiseled guides made by ancient stonecutters as they lettered monuments

Bézier curve

vector curve which is typically created with the pen or Bézier tool

Bit

the smallest unit of data in computing, with a value of either $0$ or $1$

Bitmap images

created by a series of dots. Bitmap type can lose quality as it is enlarged

Bleed

digital element such as an illustration, solid, or rule that extends beyond the trimmed edge of a printed page

Byte

$8$ bits of data

Clipping path

defines the area of an image that will be visible when placed in a layout and design program

Closed path

In vector illustration, a path that begins and ends at the same point and describes a shape, such as a rectangle or circle

Compound path

In vector illustration programs, this is a complex shape made from two or more overlapping shapes

Depth of field

the amount of visual information that appears to be in focus

DPI

method of calculating printer resolution, which describes the number of dots per a linear inch

Fill

In vector illustration, a color, gradient, or pattern applied to the open area inside of a closed path

Forced justification

aligns all text, including the last line with the left and right edges of a text block

Gigabyte

$1,000$ megabytes

Hue

The name of the basic color as in “red” or “blue”

Kerning

adjusts the amount of space between two type characters

Kilobytes

$1,024$ bytes

Megabytes

$1,024$ kilobytes or approximately one million bytes

Orphan

Word or short line of text at the end of a paragraph carried to the top of a page or column

Pantone

a professional standard color library with specific CMYK mixtures used for choosing spot colors

PDF

portable document format, a postscript file that has saved an entire design, including typography, fonts, layout information, graphics, and photographs

Pixels

picture elements, an individual point of light on the computer’s monitor

Process colors

another name for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black

TIFF

tagged image file format, a file for high resolution bitmapped images

Ascender

the lowercase character stroke which extends above the x-height

Bar

the horizontal stroke on the characters ‘A’, ‘H’, ‘T’, ‘e’, ‘f’, ‘t’

Baseline

the imaginary horizontal line to which the body, or main component, of characters are aligned

Contrast

the amount of variation between thick and thin strokes

Descender

the lowercase character stroke which extends below the baseline

Shoulder

the part of a curved stroke coming from the stem

Stem

a stroke which is vertical or diagonal

Terminal

end of a stroke which does not terminate in a serif

X-height

the height of the body, minus ascenders and descenders, which is equal to the height of the lowercase ‘x’