Glossary » Graphic Design

eye candy

graphics and illustrations designed primarily for the purpose of pleasing the visual senses; gratuitous imagery; fun and entertaining imagery with little functional value. Usually used pejoratively, eye candy may be appropriate for certain entertainment and marketing applications, but is generally…

fisheye view

a way of representing data visually such that more important information is represented larger than less important information. For instance, a map could be displayed as if through a fisheye lens, distorting the focal point to be extremely large.

flowchart

a visual way of representing a task or procedure, traditionally used by programmers to visualize the flow within their programs. Steps of a process are represented in boxes and flow is represented by arrows connecting the boxes. Input and output…

flush 3d style

a visual style for widgets in pseudo-3d interfaces; the edges of the graphic are rendered in a chiseled appearance so that the objects appear to be at the same depth as the surrounding space (the “chrome” of the interface).

focus+context

a principle of information visualization — display the most important data at the focal point at full size and detail, and display the area around the focal point (the context) to help make sense of how the important information relates…

form follows function

a design aesthetic that encourages design to be grounded on the functional, useful forms inherent in the application. This avoids gratuitous decoration but elevates the human task and the meaning of the object as the principle aesthetic.

frankensteining

the merger of multiple designs into one despite the fact that they don’t form a coherent, consistent whole. A typical situation is to present multiple design options to a client who asks for a piecemeal combination of features. While the…

Gantt chart

a diagram used in project management, where the x axis is time and the y axis shows tasks to be performed to complete the project. Each task is displayed as a horizontal bar spanning the time period during which it…

gestalt principles

principles of perception that address the interpretation of arrangements and relationships of objects; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Some of the common principles are:

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glyph

any image used in a button or message box; also, a symbol (a diamond, a cross, a smiley face) with a feature that can vary (e.g. size, angle, color) to represent the value of a variable — used in graphs…

gnomon

a miniature view of the principal axes in a 3D coordinate system used to indicate the orientation of the current view in a 3D graphics system. (originally referred to the shadow of the pointer on a sundial)

greeking

in prototypes, the representation of text as incomprehensible words, greek or latin filler words, X’s, lines, or scribbles. Also called mumble text. The idea is to give a feel for how the page will look and be organized without needing…

grid

(graphic design) a system of templates used as a framework to create a document with uniform layouts between pages while still allowing each page to adapt to its content. The grid defines positions for standard elements on the page, margins,…

halo effect

(graphics) the glow that appears around an antialiased image when it is placed over a background color that is different from the background used when making it antialiased. This occurs for gif images, which allow transparency, but only for an…

HSV

hue-saturation-value; a color model that specifies any given color based on its hue (the frequency of light, e.g. red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet), saturation (amount of white versus pure color), and value (intensity or brightness). Formally equivalent to other color models (RGB, HSB, CMYK),…

hyperbolic tree

a method of displaying a hierarchy (such as a corporate org-chart or a directory structure) of any size within a finite area (a circle). The node that is focused on is centered, and as you move away from the central…

information scent

or information residue; cues (“scent”) used in an information display that help people locate and navigate to relevant information.

For instance, the label “bugs” provides a hint that the content it labels contains information about insects or possibly software bugs…

information visualization

the study of how to effectively present information visually. Much of the work in this field focuses on creating innovative graphical displays for complicated datasets, such as census results, scientific data, and databases. An example problem would be deciding how…

kerning

the amount of spacing between adjacent letters of type. It’s not sufficient to have letters equally spaced in order for them to look equally spaced. In a word like “balloon”, the letter pair “ll” must be further apart than the…

layout manager

a program that automatically determines the layout of graphics and user interface elements based on relationships and restrictions specified by the designer/programmer. A layout manager is particularly useful for handling layouts when a programmer cannot be certain of what graphic…

legibility

the clarity of visually-presented text, affected for instance by the size of the text, the contrast between similar letters, the quality of printing or display (whether the text is damaged or blurred), the line-spacing and word-spacing, and the shape and…

lens

a movable region on the screen (such as a large magnifying glass) that transforms information below it. Typical transformations might include magnification, fisheye views, information filters (by showing street names on a map, for instance), and graphics filters (blurring, tinting,…

logical punctuation

a recommended approach to placing punctuation where the punctuation is logically grouped with the part of the sentence it applies to, rather than where arbitrary rules imply it should go. For instance, your grammar teachers said to put commas and…

look and feel

The appearance (look) and interactive style (feel) of software whose uniqueness to a particular platform or application defines the aesthetics and values of that application and how users subjectively respond to it. The look-and-feel is considered the front end of…

mockup

another term for prototypes, usually referring to low-fidelity prototypes, such as paper illustrations, screenshots, or simple configurations of screens with limited interaction.