Graphic Standards Glossary

Alignment Tool used to adjust the position of objects or text in relation to each other. The various ways objects or text can be aligned are typically left, right, center, top and bottom.

Baseline In typography, the imaginary horizontal line upon which the main body of the letters sits.

Bold A heavier, thicker style of font. Generally used for heading, or for emphasis.

CMYK Refers to the 4 ink colors used by the printing press. C is cyan (blue), M is magenta (red), Y is yellow and K is black.

Color Palette A selection of specific colors that are chosen to coordinate, contrast or harmonize as an aid to maintaining a desired degree of consistency within a visual identity system.

Condensed Fonts A condensed font or typeface is one where the letters and kerning are narrower than the main font face. Useful for using when the column width is very narrow. Condensed typefaces will usually be a sans-serif font.

DPI/Resolution A measure of a printer’s resolution. The higher the number, the better the print quality. A minimum of 300 dpi usually is required for professional-looking results.

EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) A format which is used for high-end graphic transfers.

Extended Fonts Typeface style with an extended body, in relation to the ‘normal’ font style.

Flush A block of body copy where the type lines up against the left or right of the margin. The other side is generally ragged.

Font A complete assortment of letters, numbers and symbols of a specific size and design. There are hundreds of different fonts ranging from businesslike type styles to fonts composed only of special characters such as math symbols or miniature graphics.

Font Family All the combined varieties of a single typeface design. This would include the bolds, italics, condensed, extended fonts and so on.

Glyphs A term for describing the shape and style of a single type character. For example, an italic letter ‘a’ and a Roman letter ‘a’ are two different glyphs of the same character.

Italic A type-style generally slanted at an angle.

JPEG (Joint Photographers Expert Group) A format that compresses graphics of photographic color depth. This compression makes JPEG files smaller and quicker to download.

Justification When a paragraph of text is set to the full width of the line length, so that it aligns flush on both sides. Other options include left justified (text is lined up against the left margin) and right justified (text is lined up against the right margin).

Kerning The amount of space between characters in a word.

Leading The vertical space between lines of text on a page; in desktop publishing, you can adjust the leading to make text easier to read.

Legibility Term used to describe how legible or clear a particular font or typeface is at different sizes and for different purposes.

Logo A generic term for a unique graphic symbol, display of a name or a combination of both that is used to represent a product, company, organization or other entity.

Margins The blank area of the page, outside the type area.

Pantone A popular color matching system used by the printing industry to print spot color.

PDF (Portable Document Format) A file format that uses the PostScript printer description language and is highly portable across computer platforms

Pica Unit of measurement equivalent to 4,216 mm.

Point The smallest of the typographical measuring units. 1 point equals 0.351 mm. There are 12 points in a pica. The point system is the most common form of measurement for setting type. Font sizes and line spaces (leading) are nearly always specified in points. The size of a font is the measure from the top of the ascender to the bottom of the descender.

Process Color A color printed from four separate printing plates. Four-color process printing uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) inks to produce full color reproduction.

RGB Red, green and blue; the primary colors that are mixed to display the color of pixels on a computer monitor. Every color of emitted light can be created by combining these three colors in varying levels.

Ragged Edge The non-aligned edge of an unjustified block of text. If the text is right aligned, then the left edge of the copy will be ragged and vice versa.

Roman Used to differentiate “regular” typefaces from their italic or bold versions.

Running Head Line of type running along the top of every page, above the top margin, in a printed publication. Often made up of the publication’s title or chapter name.

Sans Serif Type-styles that lacks the serif stroke at the end of the horizontal or vertical strokes of the main letter-form.

Seal In an institution, the official logo used on legal or ceremonial documents, often rendered within a circular shape.

Serif A typeface that has an extra stroke at the end of the vertical and horizontal strokes of the main letter-form.

Small Caps Typeface style where all the letter forms take the shape of its capital letter. However, the lowercase letters are smaller than the uppercase and generally, but not always, align with the same x-height as the regular Roman face, for the same font family.

Spot Color A color that is printed from one printing plate which contains one matched color of ink. Spot colors are used when only one or two solid colors are needed on a page or when a color has to match perfectly and be consistent such as with a company logo or when colors are the trademark of the organization or message.

Template A file with an associated style sheet and all standing and serial elements in place on a master page, used for publications following the same design.

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) A widely used bitmapped graphics file format developed by Aldus and Microsoft that handles monochrome, gray scale, 8-and 24-bit color. TIFF allows for customization, and several versions have been created, which does not guarantee compatibility between all programs.

Tracking Similar to kerning, in that it affects the spacing between letters. But, rather then reducing the space between two letter-faces individually, tracking affects a whole word or sentence, depending on how much text is selected to track.

Trademark A name, symbol or other device identifying a product, officially registered and legally restricted to the use of the owner or manufacturer.

Typefaces The design of an alphabet. Literally the shape and look and feel of the letters. The differences between typefaces and fonts have become somewhat blurred since the advent of PostScript driven digital typography.

Typography The study, design and usage of fonts and typefaces.

Vector Computer-aided design (CAD) programs and drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator produce vector graphics. Vector graphics scale up or down easily without looking blocky or pixilated because they are described by curves and algorithms (as opposed to individual pixels which are bitmap or raster images.)

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.”