More Design Tips

• • Get That 3D Look Without Breaking Your Budget
• • Boost Your Marketing Prowess with Perfect Postcard Design
• • 5 Ideas to Spark Those Creative Juices
• • 5 Ways to Toot Your Own Horn
• • A Metaphorical Idea
• • 5 Must-Haves in Every Layout
• • Trim the Fat: What Your Logo Doesn't Need
• • Timeboxing: An Outline for More Efficient Design
• • Paragraph Indicators - Make A Dent in Your Universe
• • Designing for Color-Blind Viewers
• • Add Sparkle With the Symbolism Tool
• • Grab Them Right Out of the Gate
• • Depicting Time and Motion with Design
• • When Color Matters
• • Design That's Easy as A-B-C
• • Eye-Teasing Design
• • Variation on a Theme
• • Room to Breathe
• • Low-Cost Clip Art and Images
• • Typographical Terms
• • Breakthrough Brochures
• • The Risk of Over Designing
• • Successful Newsletters How-To
• • Do-It-Yourself Letterhead
• • Creative in Black and White
• • Poster Design Tips

A Mini-Glossary of Typographical Terms

The following is a short list of common typographical terms:

1. The baseline is the invisible baseline that type sits on.
2. Body copy, body text, and sometimes just plain body or text refer to the main block of text that you read, as opposed to headlines, subheads, titles, etc. Body text is usually between 9 and 12 points in size.
3. A bullet is a little marker typically used in a list instead of numbers or between words. This is the standard bullet: •
4. A dingbat is a small, ornamental character. You might have the fonts Zapf Dingbats or WingDings, which are made up of dingbats.
5. Elements are the separate objects on the page. An element might be a single line of text, a graphic, or a group of items that are so close together they are perceived as one unit. To determine the number of elements on a page, squint your eyes, and count the number of times your eye stops to see each separate item on the page.
6. Extended text refers to large amounts of body copy (see above), as in a book or long report.
7. Eye flow refers to the way someone moves their eyes around a page. Designers need to become more conscious of this flow and design accordingly.
8. Justified type lines up flush on both the left and the right edges.
9. A rule is a drawn line often used under headers.
10. White space is the space on a page that is not occupied by any text or graphics. Beginners tend to be afraid of white space. Professional designers use lots of it.
11. Trapped white space occurs when the white space (see above) on a page is seemingly "trapped" between elements (such as text or photos), with no space through which to flow.

The Non-Designer's Design Book

by Robin Williams

If you want to learn more about design, but don't have the time or desire to actually study it, this is the book for you. Williams uses before-and-after examples to outline the essentials of page layout, emphasizing the four concrete principles of design - proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast. Loaded with illustrations, this volume is highly original in both content and style.