Guides · Reference
The words designers, printers and clients use for letters, color, paper and finish, defined plainly by the studio that presses them into paper every day. Each entry gives the short answer first, the deeper one second, and, where it matters, what it means once the job is on press.
197 van 197 terms
Layout & design
Also: justification, ranged left, centered
How elements line up with each other and the page: left, right, centered, justified or along a grid line.
Optical alignment sometimes beats mathematical alignment. Round shapes and punctuation are often nudged so they look aligned.
Type & lettering
The opening of a partly closed counter, like the gap in c, e or s.
Open apertures, typical of humanist faces, keep letters distinct at small sizes and from a distance. Closed apertures, typical of grotesques, look tight and uniform.
Finishes & converting
Also: AQ coating, aqueous
A clear, water-based coating applied on press to protect printing from scuffs and fingerprints.
It dries quickly and comes in gloss, satin and matte. It protects more than varnish and less than laminate.
Layout & design
Guiding the overall look and feeling of a project and making the visual decisions that hold it together.
An art director chooses the direction; designers, photographers and printers carry it out. In specialty print, choosing paper and finish is part of art direction.
Type & lettering
The part of a lowercase letter that rises above the x-height, as in b, d, h and k.
In many typefaces ascenders climb slightly higher than the capitals. Long ascenders and descenders give a typeface elegance but need more leading.
Type & lettering
The invisible line that letters sit on.
Round letters like o and s dip slightly below it, called overshoot, so they look like they sit on the same line as flat-bottomed letters.
Paper & stock
Also: lb, pound weight, #
The US system for paper weight in pounds: what 500 sheets of a paper weigh at that paper type's standard sheet size.
Because each paper class uses a different standard size, 100 lb text and 100 lb cover are very different papers. GSM avoids this confusion.
Paper & stock
Also: black core, color core, colored center
A board with a colored inner layer that appears as a fine line along the cut edges.
Some boards are manufactured this way; others achieve it by triplexing a colored sheet between two outer layers.
Type & lettering
Also: Gothic, Old English, Fraktur, textura
Dense, angular letters based on medieval European manuscript hands, sometimes called Gothic or Old English.
Gutenberg's Bible was printed in a blackletter style called textura. It remained everyday type in German-speaking countries into the 20th century.
The New York Times nameplate; the Gutenberg Bible
Prepress & files
Also: bleed area
Extra artwork extending past the trim line so that color still reaches the edge after cutting.
Without bleed, any tiny shift in cutting leaves a thin white edge. With it, the blade always falls inside the color.
Finishes & converting
Also: blind emboss, blind deboss, blind impression
Embossing or debossing with no ink or foil, so the design shows only through shadow and touch.
Blind pressing is the quietest finish. It reads best under raking light and on papers with some depth.
Paper & stock
Also: paperboard, card stock, boxboard
Heavy, rigid paper stock used for cards, packaging and covers.
Where paper ends and board begins is loosely defined. Folding boxboard and chipboard are the packaging relatives.
Type & lettering
The curved stroke that encloses a rounded counter, as in b, d, o, p and q.
Logo & identity
Also: brand book, style guide, brand standards
The rulebook for using an identity: logos, colors, type, spacing, imagery and tone.
Good guidelines show what to do as well as what to avoid. The strongest ones include print specs like Pantone references and approved paper or finish choices.
Logo & identity
Also: brand font, system font, fallback font
A brand typeface is the chosen, licensed face for designed materials; a system font is a common, pre-installed fallback used where the brand face is unavailable, such as email.
Guidelines often name both so documents written by anyone still look related.
Logo & identity
Also: brand mark
A general term for the main graphic mark a brand uses; sometimes means the symbol only, sometimes the whole logo.
Usage varies between studios. When we hear brandmark we ask which elements are meant.
Paper & stock
Also: whiteness
How much light a white paper reflects, giving it a crisp or soft appearance.
Brightness and whiteness are measured differently: brightness measures reflected blue light, while whiteness describes how neutral the white looks. Many bright papers use optical brighteners that glow under UV light.
Paper & stock
Also: pt, points, thickness, mil
The thickness of a sheet, measured in thousandths of an inch (called points or pt) or in microns.
A 32 pt card is 0.032 inches thick. Points for paper thickness are unrelated to typographic points.
Type & lettering
Also: hand calligraphy
The art of writing letters directly with a pen, brush or nib, where each stroke is made in one movement.
The shape of the tool drives the letterform: a broad nib makes thick and thin strokes by angle, a pointed nib by pressure. Much of our typography still carries those marks.
Type & lettering
The height of a typeface's capital letters from the baseline to their flat tops.
Cap height is useful for aligning type with icons or logomarks, since the visual top of a line of capitals is more stable than its point size.
Type & lettering
Also: language support, character map
The full range of characters a font supports, including accented letters, symbols and other alphabets.
Check this before choosing a face for a multilingual project. A beautiful font that lacks one accented letter can force a substitute that does not match.
Logo & identity
Also: exclusion zone, safe area, breathing room
The protected empty area around a logo that no other text or graphic may enter.
Clear space is usually defined using a part of the logo itself, such as the height of a letter, so it scales with the mark.
Color
Also: four-color process, 4/c
The four process inks used in most color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black, combined in dots to make full-color images.
K stands for key, the plate that carried the key detail, usually black. CMYK is subtractive: inks absorb light, so more ink makes a darker result.
Color
Also: C vs U, Pantone C, Pantone U
The C and U after a Pantone number show how the same ink looks on coated, smooth paper versus uncoated, absorbent paper.
Same ink, different result: on uncoated paper ink soaks in, so colors look softer and darker. Pick the swatch that matches the paper you are printing on.
Paper & stock
Also: gloss paper, silk paper, matte coated
Paper with a mineral coating that seals the surface, giving sharper, brighter printing in gloss, silk or matte finishes.
Ink sits on top of the coating, so detail stays crisp and colors stay saturated. Coated papers resist impression and can crack along folds unless scored.
Finishes & converting
Also: cold foiling
A foil applied without heat: adhesive is printed on press, foil is laminated on, and it sticks only where the adhesive is.
Cold foil runs in line with printing, so process inks can print over it to create a range of metallic colors. It has no impression and tends to be less brilliant on uncoated stock than hot foil.
Color
Also: gamut
The full range of colors a device, ink set or paper can reproduce.
Screens have a wider gamut than CMYK print, and uncoated paper narrows it further. Out-of-gamut colors get shifted to the nearest printable match.
Color
Also: ICC profile, output profile
A data file, usually ICC, that describes how a device or printing condition reproduces color, used to convert colors accurately.
Profiles let software translate between RGB screens and CMYK presses. The wrong profile is a quiet cause of muddy or oversaturated print.
Logo & identity
Also: color variant, color version
One approved color combination for a logo or design, such as full color, one color, black or white.
Most identities need at least a full-color version, a single-color version and a reversed version to work across materials.
Layout & design
A vertical division of a page where text or images are placed.
Logo & identity
Also: combo mark
A logo that pairs a symbol with a wordmark, usable together or separately.
Most identities are combination marks. The symbol can later travel alone on small spaces like social avatars and card backs.
Layout & design
Also: comprehensive, design comp
A comprehensive layout: a polished draft showing how the final piece will look, used for client approval.
Historically comps were hand-rendered with markers. Today they are usually digital, sometimes printed for presentation.
Paper & stock
Also: rag paper, cotton rag, 100% cotton
Paper made from cotton fibers in place of wood pulp, prized for its softness, strength and depth of impression.
Cotton fibers are long and resilient, so the paper feels supple and lasts. It is the traditional material for fine stationery and currency papers.
Type & lettering
The fully or partly enclosed space inside a letter, like the hole in o, the bowl of d or the eye of e.
Counters do much of the work of legibility. When they close up, letters blur into each other.
Paper & stock
Also: cover stock, text stock, cardstock
Cover stock is the heavier paper for cards and covers; text stock is the lighter paper for letterhead, pages and inserts.
Many papers come in matching text and cover weights so a stationery suite feels like one family.
Prepress & files
Also: trim marks, cut marks
Short lines outside the printed area that show where the sheet should be trimmed.
Crop marks sit outside the bleed so they are cut away. Many printers prefer files without marks and add their own.
Logo & identity
Also: bespoke typeface, proprietary font
A typeface drawn exclusively for one brand, so its words look like no one else's.
Custom faces also free a large company from licensing fees across thousands of users and devices.
Netflix Sans; IBM Plex
Finishes & converting
Also: debossing, impression
Pressing a design into the paper so it sits below the surface.
Letterpress without ink and a blind deboss can look similar. Debossing on thick cotton gives the deep, sunken look many people picture when they think of premium cards.
Paper & stock
Also: deckle edge, deckle, torn edge
A soft, feathered, irregular paper edge, as on handmade paper, left uncut on purpose.
The name comes from the deckle, the frame that holds pulp in a papermaking mold. Machine-made papers imitate it by tearing or water-jet cutting.
Color
Also: dE, ΔE, color difference
A number describing how far apart two colors are as the eye sees them; the smaller the number, the closer the match.
Delta E is calculated from measured color values. Several formulas exist, so a number is only meaningful alongside the method used.
Type & lettering
The part of a lowercase letter that drops below the baseline, as in g, j, p, q and y.
Descenders are easy to forget when placing type close to a trim line or fold. They count toward the space a line actually occupies.
Type & lettering
Also: modern, Bodoni, Didot
A high-contrast serif style with razor-thin hairlines, thick vertical strokes and flat, unbracketed serifs.
Named for Didot and Bodoni, the late 18th-century printers who perfected it. Didones look their best large and printed on smooth paper, which is why fashion magazines love them for mastheads.
Bodoni, Didot
Finishes & converting
Also: die cutting, die-cut shape, steel rule die
Cutting paper into a custom shape with a sharp steel blade formed to the outline, like a cookie cutter.
The cutting die is a strip of steel rule bent to shape and set into a wooden base. One die can cut thousands of identical shapes.
Prepress & files
Also: die line, cut line, cutter guide
A line in the artwork file showing where a piece will be cut, folded or perforated, kept on its own layer and never printed.
Dielines are usually a named spot color with different line styles for cuts, folds and perforations. Packaging dielines also show glue areas.
Finishes & converting
Also: toner foil, sleeking, foil fusing
Foil applied to a digitally printed toner or adhesive layer, with no die and no impression.
Digital foil works well for short runs and variable data, such as names on each card. It sits flat on the surface and looks smoother and less crisp at the edges than hot foil.
Druktechnieken
Also: digital press, toner printing, inkjet
Printing directly from a file with toner or inkjet, with no plates, which suits short runs and personalized pieces.
Every sheet can be different, which makes digital ideal for names, numbering and variable data. Modern digital presses come close to offset quality on many papers.
Type & lettering
Also: dlig
An optional, decorative ligature, like a joined ct or st, used for flavor rather than to fix collisions.
They sit off by default and must be switched on through OpenType features. Used sparingly on an invitation or monogram, they add a hand-set feel.
Type & lettering
Also: display type, text type, body face
Display faces are designed to be used large, for headlines and logos; text faces are designed to stay readable in paragraphs at small sizes.
Display cuts can afford finer details and tighter spacing. Text cuts have sturdier strokes, larger x-heights and looser spacing. Using a display face for small body copy is a common reason fine print looks weak.
Color
Also: tone value increase, TVI
The way halftone dots spread and grow when printed, making images and tints look darker than in the file.
Ink spreads into paper fibers and squeezes under pressure. Absorbent, uncoated papers show more gain than coated ones, and printers compensate in prepress.
Color
Also: ink drawdown, draw-down
A smear of mixed ink spread on the actual paper with a blade, used to check a spot color before printing.
Drawdowns show how ink, paper color and absorbency combine, which no swatch book can predict exactly.
Color
Also: two-color image
An image printed with two inks, usually black plus one color, for richer depth or a distinctive tone.
Duotones were a classic way to add warmth to black-and-white photos with limited inks. Today they are also used as a graphic style.
Paper & stock
Also: duplexed paper, double thick
Two sheets of paper bonded together into one thicker sheet, often in two different colors for a different front and back.
Duplexing builds thickness beyond what a single sheet offers and lets each face be a different paper.
Finishes & converting
Also: gilded edges, edge gilding, foil edges
Foil applied to the cut edges of a card stack, giving a metallic rim like a gilded book.
Book edges were gilded with real gold leaf for centuries. Modern edge foil achieves a similar shine with foil film.
Finishes & converting
Also: painted edges, edge color
Coloring the cut edges of a stack of cards so each card has a painted rim.
Edges are painted after cutting, with the stack clamped tight. The thicker the card, the more visible the color.
Type & lettering
Also: em, en, em space, en space
Relative units of space: an em equals the current point size, and an en is half an em.
They give their names to the em dash and en dash. Because they scale with the type, ems are the natural unit for indents, spaces and tracking values.
Logo & identity
Also: badge, crest, seal
A logo where the name sits inside a shape, such as a badge, crest or seal.
Emblems feel established and institutional. Their detail can make them hard to read when small.
Harley-Davidson's bar and shield
Finishes & converting
Also: embossing, raised emboss
Pressing paper between a matched pair of dies so the design rises up from the surface.
Naming gets confusing because every emboss is a deboss when viewed from the back. We name it by the side you are meant to look at.
Druktechnieken
Also: intaglio, copperplate engraving, die stamping
Intaglio printing: ink sits in lines cut into a metal plate, and heavy pressure pulls the paper into them, leaving raised, razor-sharp ink.
Engraving leaves a bruise, a slight dent on the back of the sheet, which is how you tell it from thermography. It is the traditional method for formal stationery and banknotes.
US paper currency
Logo & identity
Also: app icon, site icon
The tiny icon that represents a website in browser tabs and bookmarks; app icons are its larger cousins.
A favicon must read at a handful of pixels, so it is usually the logomark or a single initial, simplified.
Paper & stock
Also: felt, felt-marked
A soft, woven-looking texture pressed into paper during manufacture, like fine fabric.
The texture is created by textured felts on the paper machine. It hides fingerprints and adds a handmade feel.
Druktechnieken
Also: flexo
Fast relief printing with flexible rubber or polymer plates, used mostly for packaging, labels and bags.
Flexo prints with quick-drying liquid inks on rolls of paper, film and foil, which suits long runs of packaging.
Finishes & converting
Also: foil stamping, metallic foil
A thin film carrying a metallic, pigmented or holographic layer, transferred to paper by heat and pressure or by adhesive.
Foil comes in many families: metallic golds, silvers and coppers, matte and gloss pigments, holographics and pearls. Each behaves a little differently on press.
Type & lettering
Also: fount
The file (or, historically, the case of metal type) that contains one specific style of a typeface, like Garamond Bold Italic.
In metal type a font was one size of one style, cast as physical sorts. Digital fonts scale to any size, so today a font usually means one style in one file. Purists keep typeface and font separate; most people do not, and the meaning is usually clear from context.
Type & lettering
Also: type family, superfamily
All the related styles of one typeface grouped together: light, regular, bold, italic, condensed and so on.
A small family might have four styles. A large one can run to dozens across weights and widths, which lets a whole identity speak in one voice at different volumes.
Type & lettering
Also: EULA, desktop license, web license, app license
The legal terms that come with a font, defining where you may use it: desktop, web, app, logo, broadcast and so on.
A desktop license typically covers making print and images on your own computers. Web, app and e-book uses are usually separate licenses. Read the license before building a logo or identity around a face.
Type & lettering
Also: type foundry
A company or studio that designs and sells typefaces.
The name comes from the metal-casting foundries that once made physical type. Today most foundries are small independent studios.
Layout & design
Also: bleed design, edge-to-edge
A design where color or images run right off the edge of the finished piece, with no white border.
Printers cannot print exactly to the edge of a sheet, so full-bleed designs are printed oversize and trimmed. That is why your file needs bleed.
Type & lettering
Sans serifs built from near-perfect circles, triangles and straight lines, with a clean, constructed feel.
Geometric sans serifs grew out of 1920s Bauhaus thinking. Pure geometry looks wrong to the eye, so good geometric faces quietly cheat their circles and joins.
Futura, set on the Apollo 11 lunar plaque
Druktechnieken
Also: giclee, fine-art print, archival inkjet
A fine-art inkjet print made with archival pigment inks on high-quality paper or canvas.
The name was coined in the early 1990s to give fine-art inkjet prints their own identity. There is no single technical standard, so the word signals intent more than a specification.
Type & lettering
Any single drawn shape in a font: a letter, number, punctuation mark, symbol, ligature or alternate.
One character can have several glyphs. The letter a might exist as a regular form, a small cap, a swash and a stylistic alternate.
Paper & stock
Also: grain, long grain, short grain
The direction in which most fibers line up in machine-made paper.
Paper folds, tears and bends more easily with the grain and curls along it when it gains moisture.
Layout & design
Also: layout grid
An invisible framework of columns, rows and margins that designers use to place elements consistently.
Grids came to prominence with mid-century Swiss design. They speed up decisions and make a set of pieces feel related.
Type & lettering
Also: grotesk, neo-grotesque
A family of sans serifs descending from 19th-century designs, with modest stroke contrast and fairly closed letter shapes.
The name was originally an insult for type without serifs. Neo-grotesques like Helvetica and Univers refined the style in the 1950s into the default voice of modernist design. German makers spell it grotesk.
Akzidenz-Grotesk, Helvetica, Univers
Paper & stock
Also: g/m², grammage, gsm weight
Grams per square meter: the weight of one square meter of a paper, the international way to compare paper weights.
GSM is the same measure regardless of sheet size, which makes it clearer than the US pound system. It indicates weight and is only loosely linked to thickness, since density varies between papers.
Layout & design
The space between columns, or the inner margin where two facing pages meet at the binding.
The binding gutter needs extra room in bound pieces so text does not disappear into the fold.
Type & lettering
Also: hairline rule, thin
The thinnest stroke in a letter or the finest rule in a design; also the lightest weight in some type families.
On screen a hairline can be one pixel wide at any zoom. On paper it has a physical width that ink, foil or a die has to reproduce.
Color
Also: screen, halftone screen, dots
The pattern of tiny dots of varying size that lets a press print shades and photos with solid ink.
Viewed from a normal distance, the eye blends the dots into continuous tone. Look closely at a magazine photo and you can see them.
Type & lettering
Also: optical margin alignment
Pushing quotation marks, hyphens and similar marks slightly outside the text edge so the letters themselves align cleanly.
Small marks at a line's edge create a visual dent. Hanging them makes the edge look straight to the eye, even though it is not straight to the ruler.
Prepress & files
Also: press proof, contract proof, wet proof, physical proof
A physical printed proof, ranging from a calibrated color print to a press proof made with the real inks, paper and finishes.
A press proof is the most faithful preview, since it uses the actual production process. A contract proof is a color-managed print both sides agree represents the target.
Layout & design
Also: hero image, hero section
The dominant image or element on a page, usually the first thing a viewer sees.
The term comes from web and advertising design. On print pieces the hero might be a photo, a large logo or a single finish.
Color
Also: hex code, HTML color
A six-character code like #FF4F5E that specifies an RGB color for screens and the web.
Hex values are precise for screens and meaningless to a printing press. Brand guidelines should pair each hex with a Pantone and a CMYK build.
Layout & design
Also: visual hierarchy
The order in which a reader notices things on a page, set by size, weight, color, position and space.
On a business card the name usually leads, then role, then contact details. Physical finishes like foil and emboss are hierarchy tools as strong as size.
Type & lettering
Instructions inside a font that help it render crisply on low-resolution screens at small pixel sizes.
Hinting matters for screens and has no effect on print, where the outline is reproduced at full resolution.
Finishes & converting
Also: holo foil, iridescent foil, rainbow foil
A foil with a microscopic pattern that splits light into shifting rainbow colors.
The pattern is embossed into the foil itself, so it diffracts light like a prism. Patterns range from solid rainbow to fine textures and repeating motifs.
Druktechnieken
Also: foil stamping, hot stamping, foil blocking
A heated metal die presses a thin foil film onto paper, transferring a metallic or colored layer in the shape of the design.
Heat activates an adhesive on the foil and releases its colored layer from a carrier film. The pressure also leaves a slight impression, which gives hot foil its crisp, tactile edge.
Type & lettering
Typefaces whose shapes follow the movement of a broad-nibbed pen, giving them open, warm, readable letters.
The term covers Renaissance-era serifs and also sans serifs built on the same calligraphic skeleton. Humanist sans serifs tend to stay legible at small sizes thanks to their open apertures.
Gill Sans, Frutiger
Logo & identity
The coordinated set of rules and parts, such as logo versions, palette, typefaces and layouts, that let an identity flex across many uses.
A system is what keeps a business card, a website and a shipping box recognizably from the same place.
Type & lettering
A small notch cut into the corners where strokes meet, so that spreading ink fills the notch instead of blobbing the join.
Ink traps were engineered for tiny type on cheap, absorbent paper, most famously in phone directories. Today they are also used as a visible stylistic detail at large sizes.
Bell Centennial, drawn for US telephone directories
Type & lettering
Also: italic, oblique, slanted
Both lean to the right, but an italic is a separately drawn, more cursive design, while an oblique is the upright letter simply slanted.
Italics descend from Renaissance handwriting, so letters like a and f often change shape. Obliques are common in sans serifs, where a slanted roman reads naturally. A fake oblique made by skewing in software is neither, and it shows.
Type & lettering
Also: kern pair, optical kerning, metric kerning
Adjusting the space between two specific letters so the spacing looks even, like tucking an o under a T.
Fonts carry built-in kerning pairs. Large display type and logos usually still need hand kerning, because the eye judges spacing by area and the font's defaults are tuned for text sizes.
Finishes & converting
Also: kiss-cutting
Cutting through the top layer of a material, like a sticker, without cutting the backing beneath it.
Kiss cutting is how stickers peel off a sheet. A through cut, by contrast, cuts all the way.
Color
Also: knock out, KO
Removing the background color underneath an object, so the object prints directly on bare paper.
Knockouts keep colors pure, since inks overlapping can shift hue. They also make small gaps visible when registration is off, which is where trapping comes in.
Paper & stock
Also: kraft paper, kraft board
Strong brown paper or board made from unbleached pulp, with a natural, earthy look.
Kraft is German for strength, and refers to the pulping process that keeps fibers long. It is a staple of packaging.
Finishes & converting
Also: lamination, matte laminate, gloss laminate
A thin plastic film bonded to printed paper, in matte or gloss, to protect it and change its feel.
Lamination adds durability, moisture resistance and stiffness. It also turns a paper surface into a plastic one, which affects how foil and other finishes adhere.
Finishes & converting
Also: laser cutting, laser-cut paper
Cutting intricate shapes with a focused laser beam that burns through the material.
Lasers need no physical die, so they can cut lace-like detail impossible with steel rule.
Type & lettering
Also: line spacing, line height
The vertical distance from one line of text's baseline to the next.
Pronounced ledding, after the strips of lead that compositors placed between lines of metal type. Software often calls it line spacing or line height.
Type & lettering
Also: hand lettering, custom lettering
Letters drawn by hand or digitally for one specific use, like a logo, sign or book cover.
Type is a reusable system of letters; lettering is a one-off drawing; calligraphy is letters written directly with a tool in a single pass. The three overlap, and many logos start as lettering that is later refined.
Logo & identity
Also: monogram, initials logo
A logo built from initials, such as a monogram of interlocking letters.
Lettermarks suit long names and personal brands. Monograms have a long history on stationery, linens and luggage.
Louis Vuitton's LV monogram; IBM; HBO
Druktechnieken
Also: relief printing, letter press
Relief printing: a raised plate is inked and pressed into the paper, leaving a crisp image you can feel.
For centuries printers aimed for a light kiss with no visible bite. The deep impression people love today is a modern aesthetic, made possible by soft cotton papers and photopolymer plates.
Finishes & converting
Also: photopolymer plate, polymer plate, plate
The raised printing surface used in letterpress, today usually a photopolymer plate made from your artwork.
Photopolymer hardens where light hits it through a film negative; the soft areas wash away, leaving the design in relief. Historically, metal and wood type did the same job.
Type & lettering
Also: standard ligature
Two or more letters joined into a single character, like fi or fl, to avoid awkward collisions.
Standard ligatures switch on automatically in most layout software. The ampersand began life as a ligature of e and t, from the Latin et.
Prepress & files
Also: linked image, embedded image, missing links
A linked image lives as a separate file referenced by the layout; an embedded image is stored inside the file itself.
Linked images keep layout files light but break if the image goes missing, which prints as a low-resolution preview. Packaging the file or exporting a PDF gathers everything together.
Logo & identity
Also: signature, logo lockup
A fixed, approved arrangement of logo elements, like symbol, name and tagline, with set spacing and proportions.
Brands often have several lockups: horizontal, stacked and compact. Some guidelines call the primary lockup the signature.
Logo & identity
The graphic sign a business or person uses to identify itself, whether a symbol, a set of letters or both.
Logo is the umbrella word. Designers break it into logomarks, wordmarks, lettermarks, combination marks and emblems, and many identities use more than one.
Logo & identity
Also: symbol, icon, brand symbol, pictorial mark
A logo made purely of a symbol or icon, with no name attached.
A pure symbol only works alone once people already know who it belongs to, which is why most brands start with the name alongside.
Apple's apple; the Nike Swoosh
Finishes & converting
Also: magnesium die, brass die, copper die
The two common metals for foil and emboss dies: magnesium is etched and quick to make, brass is harder, longer-lasting and can be engraved in multiple levels.
Magnesium suits flat foil and single-level emboss. Brass holds fine detail over long runs and carries sculpted contours. Copper sits between the two.
Prepress & files
Also: makeready, setup, press setup
The setup work and test sheets needed to get a press or finishing machine running correctly before the real run begins.
Make-ready includes mounting plates or dies, adjusting pressure and registration, and dialing in color. The sheets used are spoiled on purpose.
Layout & design
The empty space between the content and the edge of the page.
Generous margins read as calm and premium. In print, margins also protect content from trimming variation.
Logo & identity
A character that represents a brand, often illustrated and given a personality.
Mascots can carry a brand into places a logo cannot, such as animation and merchandise.
The Michelin Man
Color
Also: metameric failure
When two colors match under one light but look different under another.
Different pigments reflect light differently. A color that matches in daylight can drift under warm indoor lighting.
Logo & identity
The smallest size at which a logo may be reproduced and still read clearly.
Guidelines often give separate minimums for print and screen, and sometimes a simplified logo version for very small uses.
Layout & design
Also: mockup, render, dummy
A realistic preview of a design shown on the real object, either as a digital render or a physical model.
Digital mock-ups are great for direction and dangerous for color or finish decisions, since screens cannot show foil, texture or paper weight accurately.
Type & lettering
Also: fixed-width, monospaced
A typeface where every character takes up exactly the same width, like on a typewriter or in code.
Monospacing makes columns of characters line up perfectly, which is why programmers use it. In running text it looks uneven, because an i gets as much room as an m.
Courier
Layout & design
Also: mood board, inspiration board
A collection of images, colors, textures and type samples that sets the feeling of a project before design begins.
Finishes & converting
Also: duplexing, lamination (paper), paper mounting
Gluing two or more sheets together after printing to build thickness or combine different papers.
Mounting, also called duplexing, is how thick cards get colored centers or different papers on each side.
Finishes & converting
Also: sculpted emboss, sculptured emboss, multi-level
An emboss with several heights or rounded, sculpted contours, so the design looks modeled in relief.
Single-level embossing pushes everything up the same amount. Sculpted dies are engraved with graded depths and bevels, like a coin.
Druktechnieken
Also: offset, litho, offset printing
The most common commercial printing method: ink is transferred from a metal plate to a rubber blanket and then onto paper.
Lithography relies on oil and water repelling each other. Image areas on the plate attract ink, the rest attracts water. The offset step onto a blanket lets the plate print evenly on many surfaces.
Type & lettering
Also: text figures, lining figures, oldstyle numerals
Oldstyle figures vary in height and dip below the line like lowercase letters; lining figures all stand at cap height like capitals.
Oldstyle figures blend into running text and feel bookish. Lining figures suit tables, headings and all-caps settings. Many fonts include both.
Paper & stock
Also: show-through
How much a paper blocks light, which decides how much printing on the back shows through.
Heavier, denser and darker papers are more opaque. Low opacity is fine for single-sided pieces and a problem for two-sided ones.
Type & lettering
Also: OpenType, font features
Optional behaviors built into modern fonts, such as ligatures, small caps, figure styles and stylistic alternates.
They are switched on in layout software through menus or CSS. A font's features are often where its real craft lives.
Type & lettering
Also: opsz, optical sizing
Versions of a typeface tuned for a particular size, with sturdier details for small text and finer details for large display.
In metal type every size was cut by hand, so small sizes were naturally adjusted. Digital scaling lost that, and optical sizes, sometimes built into variable fonts, bring it back.
Prepress & files
Also: outline fonts, create outlines, convert text to curves, curves
Converting live text into vector shapes so it prints exactly as designed even on a computer without the font.
Outlined text can no longer be edited as text, so keep a live version of your file. Embedding fonts in a PDF achieves a similar safety.
Color
Also: overprint fill, surprint
Printing one ink directly on top of another without removing the color underneath.
By default, software knocks out the background beneath an object. Overprinting black text over a colored area prevents gaps if plates shift slightly.
Prepress & files
Also: overruns, underruns, overs, unders
A long-standing print trade custom allowing the delivered quantity to differ slightly from the ordered quantity.
Every press run and finishing step spoils some sheets, and the number is never exactly predictable. Overs and unders account for that.
Color
Also: PMS, Pantone Matching System
The most widely used standard for naming and matching spot ink colors, known as the Pantone Matching System (PMS).
Each Pantone number corresponds to an ink formula, so a designer and a printer anywhere can refer to the same color. Pantone also publishes guides for CMYK equivalents, which often look noticeably different from the spot ink.
Prepress & files
Also: PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-4, press PDF
A family of PDF standards made for print exchange, which require embedded fonts and well-defined color so the file prints as intended.
PDF/X-1a allows only CMYK and spot colors and flattens transparency. PDF/X-4 keeps live transparency and allows color-managed RGB. Both are ISO standards.
Finishes & converting
Also: perf, tear-off
A line of small cuts that lets part of a piece be torn away cleanly, like a ticket stub.
Finishes & converting
Also: matte foil, color foil, opaque foil
A non-metallic foil in a flat color, like white, black or red, applied by hot stamping.
Pigment foils are fully opaque, so they can print light colors cleanly on dark paper where ink would sink in.
Type & lettering
Also: pt, type size
The unit used to measure type size and leading; in digital design one point is 1/72 of an inch.
Point size measures the body the letters sit on, rather than any single letter, which is why two fonts at the same size can look different. Paper thickness also uses a unit called points, which is a different measure entirely.
Prepress & files
Also: preflighting, file check
Checking a file for production problems before it goes to press: fonts, image resolution, color, bleed, overprint and layers.
Software can automate part of preflight. A human eye still catches things automation misses, such as a hairline that will vanish in foil.
Prepress & files
Also: press-ready file, print-ready PDF, final art
A file prepared so it can go straight to production: correct size, bleed, color mode, fonts handled and every finish clearly separated.
Most print-ready files are PDFs. The checklist covers size, bleed, resolution, color, fonts, and for specialty work, a separate layer for each finish.
Color
Also: four-color, CMYK build
A color printed by mixing dots of the four CMYK inks, as opposed to a premixed spot ink.
Process color is efficient for photos and multicolor artwork, since four inks produce thousands of colors. It is less consistent than a spot ink for a single brand color.
Layout & design
Also: proofing, approval proof
A preview of the final printed piece that the client checks and approves before production starts.
Proofs range from a PDF on screen to a printed sample on the real stock. Approving a proof means confirming spelling, layout, sizes and finishes are right.
Layout & design
Also: callout
A short excerpt from a text, enlarged and set apart to draw the reader in.
Type & lettering
Also: ragged right, ragged left
The uneven edge of a block of left- or right-aligned text.
A good rag has a gentle rhythm, without deep holes or long staircases. Designers adjust it with line breaks and occasional hyphenation.
Finishes & converting
Also: raised spot UV, 3D UV, dimensional UV
Spot UV built up in a thick layer so it stands above the surface and can be felt.
Raised UV is usually applied digitally by inkjet, which allows variable heights and fine detail without a die.
Prepress & files
Also: bitmap, pixel image
An image made of a grid of pixels, like a photo, which blurs or turns jagged when enlarged too far.
JPG, PNG, TIFF and PSD are raster formats. Raster suits photos and painterly artwork. Saving a raster image into an AI or PDF file does not make it vector.
Paper & stock
Also: FSC, post-consumer waste, PCW, eco paper
Recycled paper contains recovered fiber; FSC certification shows the fiber comes from responsibly managed forests through a tracked supply chain.
Post-consumer content means fiber from paper people actually used and recycled. FSC labels come in variations, such as 100%, Mix and Recycled.
Color
Also: registration color, [Registration]
A swatch that prints at full strength on every plate, meant only for crop and registration marks.
Software offers it so marks appear on every separation. Used in artwork, it floods the paper with all four inks at once.
Prepress & files
Also: reg marks, register marks, registration
Small targets printed outside the trim that let the press line up every color and finish exactly.
When every separation hits the same target, the inks are in register. Misregistration shows as colored halos or gaps.
Prepress & files
Also: ppi, dpi, image resolution
How much detail an image holds, measured in pixels per inch (ppi) for images and dots per inch (dpi) for printers.
The two terms are used interchangeably in everyday talk. Resolution only matters at the final printed size: enlarging an image spreads its pixels thinner.
Logo & identity
Also: knockout logo, reverse, white logo
A logo shown in white or a light color on a dark background.
Reversing changes how heavy a design looks: light on dark tends to look bolder, so careful identities draw a slightly adjusted reverse version.
Color
Also: sRGB
Red, green and blue light, the color model of screens, cameras and scanners.
RGB is additive: more light makes a brighter result, all three at full make white. Files built in RGB must be converted to CMYK or matched to spot inks for print.
Color
Also: deep black, four-color black
A deep black made by printing black ink over a supporting layer of cyan, magenta or yellow.
Black ink alone can look slightly gray over large areas. Adding other inks underneath deepens it.
Druktechnieken
Also: riso
A stencil-based duplicator that prints one bright, soy-based ink color at a time, with a grainy, slightly imperfect charm.
Risograph is originally a trade name that became the common word for the process. It is popular with artists and zine makers for its vivid spot colors and affordable short runs.
Type & lettering
Also: upright, regular
The upright, regular style of a typeface, as opposed to its italic.
The word also names the Latin alphabet itself and the classical letterforms carved in Roman inscriptions, which still shape our capitals.
Finishes & converting
Also: rounded corners, corner rounding
Corners trimmed into a curve, which softens the card and helps it resist dog-ears.
Corner radius is a design choice in its own right: a small radius feels precise, a large one feels friendly.
Layout & design
Also: safety margin, live area, safe area
The inner area of a design where important text and logos should stay, away from the trim line.
Cutting has small mechanical variation, so anything placed too close to the edge risks being clipped or looking off-center.
Type & lettering
Also: sans
A typeface without serifs, with plain stroke endings, like Helvetica, Futura or Gill Sans.
Sans is French for without. Sans serifs split into broad families: grotesque, geometric and humanist, each with a different temperament.
Helvetica, Futura, Gill Sans
Finishes & converting
Also: score, crease, creasing
Pressing a groove into thick paper along the fold line so it folds cleanly without cracking.
The words are often used loosely. Strictly, a crease compresses fibers into a bead; a score can also mean a partial cut used on very thick board.
Druktechnieken
Also: silkscreen, serigraphy, screenprint
Pushing ink through a fine mesh stencil onto a surface, laying down a thick, opaque layer of color.
Screen printing works on almost anything: paper, fabric, plastic, wood, glass. Its thick ink film makes it the classic choice for opaque white on dark materials.
Type & lettering
Typefaces that imitate handwriting or calligraphy, usually with joined, flowing letters.
Scripts range from formal copperplate styles used on wedding invitations to loose brush scripts. Most need contextual alternates and ligatures to connect convincingly.
Coca-Cola's Spencerian script logo
Prepress & files
Also: seps, color separations, plates
The individual layers a design is split into, one for each ink, plate or finish.
A CMYK image separates into four plates. Each spot ink, foil, emboss or varnish adds another separation of its own.
Type & lettering
A small stroke or foot at the end of a letter's main strokes, and the name for typefaces that have them, like Garamond or Times.
Serifs trace back to carved and brush-written Roman capitals. They help long text flow along the line, which is why most books are still set in serif faces.
Garamond, Caslon, Times New Roman
Type & lettering
Also: Egyptian, mechanistic
A typeface with heavy, block-like serifs roughly as thick as the main strokes.
Slabs arrived in early 19th-century advertising posters and later became the voice of typewriters. They hold up well in rough printing conditions.
Rockwell, Clarendon, Courier
Prepress & files
Also: slug area, info area
An area outside the bleed in a layout file used for notes, job information or color bars, trimmed away before delivery.
The word also lingers from metal type, where a slug was a full line of type cast as one piece.
Type & lettering
Also: smcp
Capital letters drawn at roughly lowercase height, with stroke weights matched to the surrounding text.
True small caps are designed into the font. Fake ones made by shrinking regular capitals look thin and light next to the text.
Paper & stock
Also: super smooth, smooth
An uncoated paper surface that has been pressed flat and even, without visible texture.
Smooth uncoated papers are the most versatile canvas: crisp enough for fine type and foil, natural enough for letterpress.
Prepress & files
Also: PDF proof, digital proof, screen proof
A proof viewed on screen, usually a PDF, used to check content, layout and finish placement.
A soft proof is reliable for spelling, layout and which areas get which finish. It cannot show true color, texture or the way foil catches the light.
Finishes & converting
Also: soft touch, velvet laminate, suede laminate
A thin film with a velvety, matte surface that makes printed paper feel smooth and soft.
Soft-touch mutes colors slightly and resists glare. It is a popular base for spot UV and foil contrast.
Type & lettering
Also: type specimen
A sheet or booklet showing a typeface's styles, sizes and characters so designers can judge it.
Foundries have printed specimens for centuries. Printing a specimen line on your own paper choice is still the best way to see how a face behaves in ink.
Color
Also: spot ink, solid color, PMS color
A single premixed ink printed as its own solid color, used when one exact color matters.
Spot inks can reach colors outside CMYK, including fluorescents, metallics and pastels, and they print as smooth solids without dots.
Finishes & converting
Also: spot gloss, spot UV coating
A clear, glossy coating applied only to selected areas and hardened with ultraviolet light.
Spot UV creates contrast between shine and matte. It shows best over a matte or soft-touch surface.
Layout & design
Also: two-page spread, reader spread
Two facing pages designed and viewed together, as in an open book or a folded card.
Designers lay out spreads together; printers may impose the pages separately depending on folding and binding.
Finishes & converting
Also: foil die, emboss die, brass die, block, cliché
The metal block carrying a design, used to apply foil or press an emboss or deboss.
Foil dies are heated; emboss dies come in pairs, a raised male and recessed female. Dies are made from your vector artwork.
Type & lettering
Also: contrast
The difference between the thickest and thinnest strokes within a letter.
Low-contrast faces, like many slabs and sans serifs, look even and sturdy. High-contrast faces, like Didones, look elegant and formal.
Type & lettering
The variant of a typeface within its family, usually upright (roman) or slanted (italic or oblique), sometimes combined with weight as in Bold Italic.
Software menus often list weight and width under style as well, so the word has a loose everyday meaning and a narrow typographic one.
Type & lettering
Also: alternate, alternates, ss01
A bundle of alternate letter designs built into a font, such as a single-story a or a straight-legged R, switched on as a group.
Fonts can carry up to twenty numbered stylistic sets. Individual alternates can also be picked one at a time from the glyphs panel.
Type & lettering
Also: swash capital, flourish
A letter with an extended, flourished stroke, often a capital or ending letter in an italic or script.
Swashes look best at the start or end of a word or line. Used on every letter they compete with each other.
Type & lettering
Also: tabular numbers, proportional figures
Numbers that all share the same width so columns of figures line up, as opposed to proportional figures.
Use tabular figures for prices, tables and phone numbers stacked in a list. Proportional figures look better in a sentence.
Type & lettering
Also: ball terminal, teardrop terminal
The end of a stroke that has no serif, such as the top of a c or the tail of a y, often shaped as a ball, teardrop or sharp cut.
Terminals carry much of a typeface's personality. Ball terminals feel classical, flat cuts feel modern.
Druktechnieken
Also: raised printing, raised ink
A raised-print effect made by dusting wet ink with powder and heating it until it swells into a glossy bump.
Thermography was developed as an affordable look-alike for engraving. Unlike engraving, the back of the sheet stays flat.
Color
Also: screen, screen tint, percentage
A lighter version of a color made by printing it as a percentage of the solid, using halftone dots.
A 30 percent tint of a spot ink prints as small dots of that ink with paper showing between them.
Prepress & files
Also: production tolerance, variance
The small, accepted amount of variation in a physical process, such as cutting position, registration or color.
No press or cutter is perfectly repeatable. Tolerances are why designs need bleed and safe zones, and why finishes need breathing room between them.
Paper & stock
Also: surface texture
The fine surface roughness of a paper that you feel with your fingertips and that grips ink, pencil or pressure.
Toothy papers suit writing and letterpress. Smooth papers suit fine detail and foil.
Color
Also: TAC, total area coverage, ink limit
The combined percentage of all inks printed in one spot, used to keep dark areas from overloading the paper.
Each paper can only absorb so much ink before it smears, sets off onto the next sheet or dries slowly. Uncoated papers accept less than coated ones.
Type & lettering
Also: letter-spacing, letterspacing
Adjusting the spacing evenly across a whole word, line or block of text.
Small capitals and all-caps lines usually benefit from a little added tracking. Body text rarely does.
Paper & stock
Also: vellum paper, tracing paper, parchment paper
A semi-transparent, frosted paper often used for overlays, invitation wraps and layered stationery.
Vellum originally meant fine calfskin parchment. Modern translucent vellum is a dense paper made translucent in manufacture.
Color
Also: trap, spread and choke
A tiny overlap added between touching colors so slight press movement does not leave white slivers.
Light colors are usually spread slightly under darker ones. Trapping is mostly applied automatically in prepress.
Layout & design
Also: trim size, trim line, finished size
The final cut edge and size of a printed piece.
Trim size is the finished dimension. The trim line in your file shows where the blade will fall.
Paper & stock
Also: triple layer, triple thick
Three sheets bonded together, frequently with a colored middle layer that shows as a stripe along the edge.
The core color peeks out on every edge, a quiet detail that people notice when they pick the card up.
Type & lettering
The person who draws the letters of a typeface and engineers the spacing, kerning and features that make it work.
Designing a full family can take years. Lettering artists and logo designers draw letters too, usually for a single use rather than a reusable system.
Type & lettering
Also: type family design
The design of a set of letters, such as Garamond or Helvetica, considered as a whole across every size and weight.
A typeface is the idea; a font is the thing that delivers it. In everyday speech the two words are used interchangeably, and most designers have made peace with that.
Paper & stock
Also: natural paper, offset paper
Paper with a natural, unsealed surface that feels like paper and absorbs ink.
Uncoated stock gives softer color, a matte look and a pleasant tooth. It is easy to write on and takes impression well.
Druktechnieken
Also: UV inkjet, UV-cured printing
Inkjet printing with inks that cure instantly under ultraviolet light, allowing printing on plastic, metal, wood and other non-paper surfaces.
Because the ink hardens the moment it lands, it sits on top of the surface instead of soaking in. Layered UV ink can also build raised, textured effects.
Type & lettering
Also: variable typeface
A single font file that contains a continuous range of styles, so you can choose any weight or width along a slider.
Introduced to the OpenType format in 2016. Common axes are weight, width, slant and optical size. For print, the final chosen instance is what matters, so we ask for type outlined or the font embedded in the PDF.
Finishes & converting
Also: flood varnish, spot varnish, press varnish
A clear ink-like layer printed over the whole sheet (flood) or in chosen areas (spot) for protection or subtle shine.
Varnishes are applied by the press like an extra ink. Matte and gloss varnishes side by side create quiet tone-on-tone effects.
Prepress & files
Also: vector art, vector file, paths
Artwork made of mathematical paths and shapes, which stays perfectly sharp at any size.
Logos, type and line art should be vector. Common vector formats are AI, EPS, SVG and vector-based PDF.
Paper & stock
Also: eggshell finish
A slightly toothy, eggshell-like surface on uncoated paper, somewhere between smooth and textured.
Not to be confused with translucent vellum paper. Vellum finish describes a surface feel, while translucent vellum is a different material.
Logo & identity
Also: brand identity, corporate identity
Everything a brand looks like: logo, colors, type, imagery, materials and the way they are put together.
Identity is the visible layer of a brand. Paper, weight and finish belong to it as much as color and type.
Type & lettering
Also: web font, WOFF, WOFF2
A font file prepared and licensed for use on websites, typically in WOFF or WOFF2 format.
Webfonts are optimized for screens and often need their own license separate from the desktop version you print with.
Type & lettering
How thick or thin a typeface's strokes are, from hairline and light through regular to bold and black.
Weights are often numbered on a 100 to 900 scale in software, with 400 as regular and 700 as bold, though each foundry draws its own steps.
Layout & design
Also: negative space
The empty areas of a design; also called negative space, it does not need to be white.
Negative space can also hold its own shape, like the arrow hidden between the E and x of the FedEx wordmark.
The FedEx arrow
Type & lettering
Also: widow, orphan, runt
A stranded short line or single word left alone at the end of a paragraph, column or page.
Definitions vary. Many typographers call a lone last line at the top of a new column a widow and a lone first line at the bottom of a column an orphan; others use either word for a single word on the final line. Either way, it is a spacing problem to fix.
Type & lettering
Also: condensed, extended, compressed
How narrow or wide the letters of a typeface are drawn, from compressed and condensed through normal to extended.
True condensed and extended styles are redrawn by the designer. Squashing a regular font horizontally in software distorts the strokes and is easy to spot.
Logo & identity
Also: logotype
A logo made entirely of the name, set in distinctive type or custom lettering.
A good wordmark is carefully kerned and often subtly redrawn, even when it starts from an existing typeface.
FedEx, Coca-Cola, Google, and Instagram’s wordmark redrawn in 2026
Type & lettering
The height of a typeface's lowercase letters, measured by the letter x.
Two fonts set at the same point size can look very different in size because of their x-heights. Larger x-heights read better small.