Every industry has its jargon. The words specific to their profession that someone outside the industry would scratch their heads at and graphic design is no different. I covered a few of the most common ones last time. This time I thought I’d cover a few more people might know about, but maybe be curious about the meaning!
Kerning
No, It has nothing to do with corn or plants. Kerning is a typesetting term from the days of the printing press that we still use to talk about removing space between two letters
Typography
Typography is all about words! The arrangement, style & appearance of them! It comes from Greek meaning Impression (typo) and specific (graphy).
X-Height
X-height might sound like the name of a comic book character, but its actually a term meant to refer to how tall lower case letters are in a particular font. This is determined by measuring the letter X
Leading
Leading ( say “ledding”) comes from the days of the printing press when press operators would use thin bars of lead to separate lines of text.
Drop Cap
You’ve likely seen them in magazines. The large letters at the beginning of a paragraph are called Drop Caps. They’re purely decorative and meant to catch attention
There you have it! Five more common design terms, and their definitions! I hope this helps you with your future design work!
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