General Design Terms

General Terms

Asset - Any graphic, image, or video.

Aspect Ratio - Ratio of width to height on an image, graphic, or video. (i.e., 1280px X 720px means 1280 pixel width and 720 pixel height)

Balance - The distribution of design elements according to their size weight and color across the medium. 

Bleed - When a something is printed and requires the design to run to the edge of the final sheet, the design needs to extend beyond the ideal dimensions. The area in which the design extends into is called a "bleed" and the printer cuts this portion off. So, if you're printing something that is 8.5" x 11" with color to the edge of the paper, the printer will use a larger sheet of paper to print the design and cut off the bleed. When downloading a flyer in Express, there is an option to download the printers file for graphics that require design to the edge of the paper.

Brand Identity - Everything that makes up the brand in visual form. This includes logos, fonts, color palettes, and style.

Body Copy - The main text of your design that includes paragraphs, sentences, or other text.

CMYK - A color mode (stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black)) that is used in printing. Those colors combine to create all the different colors you see. 

Color Palette - A color scheme. The Penn State palette's are available via HHD's Creative Cloud Libraries.

Contrast - Arrangement of opposite elements on a page. For example, a dark background with light text or a textured graphic and a solid color graphic. Contrast helps create visual interest, but contrast can also make things difficult to view causing accessibility concerns. 

Font - The typeface used when adding text to a graphic or document.

Gradient - Gradual color change across a graphic. These can add positive visual elements or even hide areas of an image that are not desired.

Hard Return / Soft Return - A hard return (just hitting "enter/return") creates a new paragraph. A soft return (hitting "shift+enter/return") puts the cursor on the next line.

Heading - The title text or larger text of your graphic or document that helps separate

Kerning - Space between two specific letters or characters.

Leading (pronounced 'ledding') - The space between to lines of text.

Penn State Mark - You can think of the Penn State mark as the shield with PennState its own or with a specific college, department, or unit -- note that these marks can not be altered in any way and that includes manually adding a lab or unit name in the place of a college or department. If needed, a word mark could be used which is one of the Penn State marks along with styled text. A word mark must be separate from the the Penn State mark, ideally on opposite sides of the graphic. Learn more about the marks and see example of how to use and how not to use the mark. Links to an external site.

Margin - The blank space between the content and the edge of the art/page.

Monospaced - A typeface where each character is the same width, all occupying the same amount of horizontal space.

Resolution - Essentially, denotes the size of the image based on how many units (think pixels) occupy a linear inch on an image.

RGB - A color mode (stands for red, green, and blue) used for digital applications. These colors can be combined to create all of the colors you see.

Sans Serif - A font without serifs on the letters. Digital graphics tend to be easier to read when sans serif fonts are used.

Serif - A small line that appears on the end of letters within serif fonts.

Slab Serif - Similar to serif fonts, the small lines are thicker.

Stock Photo - Licensed photos you can use in your design. Photos you use from Adobe Stock or Adobe Express are examples of stock photos. Note that you must have permission (i.e., the license) to use photos that you didn't take. Exceptions are those photos provided by HHD Communications and Marketing and Penn State. In any case, you need to follow the guidelines for citing a photo in your design when purchasing an image from a stock photo company (i.e., Getty).

Template - A graphic or flyer that has elements in it that you can reuse without needing to create the design from scratch. You can customize the elements to shorten your development time.

Tension - Relationship between to opposing design elements that are in conflict by size, color and balance. 

Tracking - The spacing between letters in an entire word as well as words within the paragraph.

White Space - Empty space (doesn't need to be white) between elements (graphic or text) within a design. White space helps the eye focus on what is important in the design. Without it, your audience will have a hard time understanding the point of your graphic.