Vocabulary
Intro
Being familiar with commonly used visual design terms should help you communicate and express your ideas more effectively.
Relevant
Bleed: After paper has been printed, the inks may run over the trim marks of the paper. This is known as ‘bleeding.’
Crop Marks: Lines put onto the pages to show where the document or print will be trimmed.
Debossing: Stamping a design into the surface of an object or paper so that there’s an indent.
Die-cut: A Die refers to a precise, razor-sharp steel blade that allows multiple pieces of the same shape to be created in an efficient and uniform manner.
Embossing: The process of creating raised relief images on paper and other materials. The design will bulge out of the paper.
Kerning: In typography, this is the process of adjusting the visual spacing between characters, usually to achieve a more aesthetically pleasing result.
Trim: This is the line cut to produce the finished size. The trim cuts through the bleed area to ensure a continuous and sharp edge around a design.
RGB: The color space of Red, Green and Blue which computers use to display images on your screen. An RGB computer file must be translated into CMYK in order to be printed accurately.
Caption/ Cutline: A title or explanatory phrase accompanying a picture. The larger type over a cutline.
Dateline: The line at the beginning of a story giving the place and date of the reported incident
Body Copy: The main part of a story
Byline: The name of the writer printed at the top of a story
Leading: The amount of space between lines
Justify: To space out a line of type so that each line fits flush to the margin.
Printing
Provide a face: A clear brand identity gives the public a visual image they can use as the “face” of the company, making your business memorable.
Build credibility: A consistent, long-term brand identity helps build your credibility in the marketplace as a dependable and trustworthy company.
Offer a template: With a thorough brand identity, all of your marketing and advertising choices have a consistent template that ensures the customer knows what they’re looking at belongs to your company.
Support your mission: Ideally, every choice you make about your brand identity refers back to your company’s mission and values. This consistently aligns your branding with your goals.
Generate new customers: With regular exposure, potential customers will come to trust your company and engage with the brand, hopefully resulting in a purchase.
Maintain past customers: A clear brand identity helps current and past customers remain connected to your company’s values and ideals and hopefully encourages them to make additional purchases.
F-stop: The aperture setting that limits the brightness of the image by restricting the input pupil size.
Burst rate: The number of consecutive shots a camera can take in continuous shooting mode
Dynamic range: The range of luminance of an image between its highest and lowest light intensities, usually pure white and pure black.
Exposure: Tthe amount of light that reaches the camera sensor and it determines how light or dark an image is. The exposure of an image is determined by the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO
ISO: Represents the sensor’s sensitivity to the light. The higher the number, the most information will be captured. Higher ISO numbers are used in low-light situations.
JPEG: The standard format in which pictures are compressed. Due to this compression, JPEG files are smaller and carry less information than RAW files.
Metadata: The essential information about the image. This includes dimensions, resolution, keywords, camera settings, focal length, copyright owner, etc. Most of this information is automatically added to the photos.
RAW: File format that saves the image as it was captured by the sensor, with minimal processing and no compression. This allows photographers to take complete control over the creative edition of the photo. On the downside, RAW files are much larger than JPEGs
Shutter speed: The length of time a camera sensor is exposed to light when taking a photo. Slow shutter speeds capture the blur of subjects in motion, making it highly valuable for night and landscape photographers. On the other hand high speeds allow photographers to freeze a single millisecond in time
White balance: The adjustment done to an image in order to compensate for the temperature of the light illuminating the scene.
Video
Aspect Ratio: The relationship between the width and the height of your video dimensions expressed as a ratio. The most common aspect ratios for video are 4:3, 16:9 and 1.85:1.
B-roll: Supplemental footage that provides supporting details and greater flexibility when editing video. Common examples include the footage used to cut away from an interview or news report to help tell the story.
Color correction: When an editor digitally manipulates colors in post-production.
J-cut: A type of cut in which the sound of the next scene precedes the picture. The name comes from the shape these clips make in the timeline of an editing program.
Boom microphones: Long, highly directional microphones. They are normally attached to boom poles to capture dialogue in a scene. They also can be mounted directly on cameras to capture long distance sound.
Lavalier microphone: A small clip-on microphone that attaches to the subject’s clothing. Normally used on TV newscasts or sitcoms that require sound to be captured from the subject without it being obvious that there is a microphone attached.
Memory card: A data storage device used to store the digital information of your photos and videos on your camera. The two main types of memory cards are Secure Digital (SD) and Compact Flash (CF).
Monopod: Similar to a tripod, but with only one ‘foot.’ It provides support but also mobility, and is handy in situations where bringing a tripod would be too cumbersome.
Resolution: A measure of the number of pixels a video contains both horizontally and vertically. Some common resolutions are 640×480 (SD) 1280×720 (HD), 1920×1080 (HD). Sometimes these are referred to just by their vertical dimension such as, 480p, 720p or 1080p.