1. Basic Desktop TerminologyBy
Wendi Cochran
Douglas High School

2. Basic Layout Terms Use the websites listed to find examples of the design terms defined.

3. Alignment Alignment of text and or graphics on a document.
Illustrating the Principles of Design

4. Asymmetrical Design
Contemporary design in which contrasing elements of unequal weight and proportion are positioned on a page to achieve balance.

5. Balance
Attain balance by equally distributing the weight of various elements, such as blocks of text, graphics, images, headings, ruled lines, white space on a page. Balance is usually symmetrical or asymmetrical. Look up the following site:
Illustrating the Principles of Design

6. Consistency
Uniformity among specific design elements establishes a pattern of consistency in your document. Inconsistency can confuse and frustrate the reader and can lead to a reduction in readership.

7. Contrast
The difference between varying degrees of lightness and darkness on the page.
Illustrating the Principles of Design

8. Directional Flow
Positioning elements to draw the reader’s eyes through the document.

9. Focus
An elements used to attract the reader’s eyes.

10. Legibility
The ease with which individual characters are recognized.

11. Proportion
Sizing elements in relation to their relative importance and to each other.

12. Symmetrical Design
Balancing similar elements equally on a page(centered alignment).

13. White Space Background space with no text or graphics.
Illustrating the Principles of Design

14. Z-Pattern
When scanning a paper the eyes have a tendency to move in a Z pattern.

15. Typography Terms

16. Ascenders Ascender: Parts of fonts that extend above the x-height.

17. Baseline
Imaginary horizontal line on which characters rest.

18. Cap Height
Distance between the baseline and top of the capital letters.

19. Descenders Parts of fonts that extend below the baseline.

20. Kerning
Decreasing or increasing the horizontal space between specific character pairs. On the font dialog box under Character Spacing in Word.

21. Pitch
The number of characters that can be printed in one horizontal inch.

22. Point Size
Point Size: l/72 of an inch. 72 points are equal to one inch

23. Sans Serif Without small strokes at the end of characters.
Examples of Sans Serif Fonts:
Arial
Tahoma
Antique Olive

24. Serif Fonts A small stroke at the end of a character.
Examples of Serif Fonts
Times New Roman
Garamond

25. Typeface Font Styles
A set of characters with a common design and shape.
Such as
Impact, Times New Roman, Arial

26. Typestyle 4 categories of styles Normal (regular, roman) Bold Italic

27. X-Height
Height of the font’s lowercase x.

28. Drop Cap
Decorative first letter of paragraph or sentence used to draw the reader’s eye.

29. Tracking
Which refers to the horizontal spacing between letters or characters.

30. Leading
Refers to the amount of added vertical spacing between lines of type. In consumer-oriented word processing software, this concept is usually referred to as "line spacing".

31. Weight
The thickness or heaviness of the strokes of a font style. Font weights generally range from 'light', on to 'medium' and then through to 'heavy'. With the advent of digital fonts technology, there are now more choices of font weights than ever.

32. Color and Graphic Terms

33. Hue
The variation of the primary color such as green-blue.

34. Metafiles
Graphic files that allow images to be ungrouped and edited in Microsoft applications.

35. Pixel
Short for picture element, a pixel is each individual dot or square or color in a picture or bitmapped graphic.

36. Raster Graphics
A raster image is a bitmapped image where pixels of color are used to create an image.

37. RGB Red, Green and Blue colors that makeup today’s computer monitors.

38. Contrast
The amount of gray in a color.

39. Resolution
Is the number of dots that make up an image on a screed or printer-the higher the resolution, the denser the number of dots and “higer resolution” of the print.

40. Gradient
Gradual varying of color

41. Grayscale
Is the range of shades from black to white.

42. CYMK
This is an acronym for cyan, yellow, magenta and black. A color printer combines these colors to create different colors.

43. Brightness
Is the amount of light in a color.

44. Luminosity
The brightness of a color, that is, the amount of black and white added to a color. The larger the luminosity number, the lighter the color.

45. Saturation
This is the purity of a color. A color is completely pure, or saturated when it is not diluted with white. Red, for example, has a high saturation value

46. Vector Graphic
These graphics are made up of mathematically defined lines and curves. A vector graphic picture can be moved, resized, recolored, and enlarged without affecting its output quality at all.

47. Scale
To increase or decrease the size of an image proportionally or disproportionally.

48. Twain
A cross-platform interface for acquiring electronic images captured by scanners and digital cameras.