Glossary

Ambigram

Lettering that still reads — as the same word or another — when rotated or mirrored.

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Baseline

The invisible line letters sit on. A baseline grid locks every line of text on every page to the same set of lines, so columns and facing pages align.

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Blackletter (Fraktur)

Broken, angular type descended from medieval manuscripts (Textura, Fraktur). Standard in German-speaking countries into the 1940s; today it quotes history, nationalism, heavy metal or newspaper mastheads, and is rarely neutral.

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Capitals (all caps)

The large letters. A line set only in capitals looks monumental and loud but reads more slowly: every word becomes a rectangle without ascenders and descenders to help recognition. Capitals almost always need added letterspacing.

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Condensed type

A typeface drawn narrower than its normal width. It lets a long word run large in a tight space and gives a vertical, urgent rhythm. Squeezing an ordinary font with horizontal scaling is not the same: it thins the verticals and distorts the curves.

Counter

The enclosed or partly enclosed space inside a letter (in o, e, a, the bowl of p). Type designers draw the counters as carefully as the black shapes, and a designer can place a second image inside one.

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Didone

Serif type with extreme contrast between thick strokes and hairlines, vertical stress and flat, thin serifs (Bodoni, Didot). Elegant and fashion-coded: the classic magazine masthead type. It breaks up at small sizes and in coarse print.

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Display type

Type designed to be used large — headlines, posters, covers — where detail, contrast and personality can show. Set small it usually falls apart; a text face set huge often looks bland.

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Dry transfer lettering (Letraset)

Sheets of letters rubbed onto artwork with a burnisher; Letraset launched them in 1961. Cheap, fast and available to anyone — the tool of fanzines, punk graphics (Jamie Reid) and quick mock-ups before the computer.

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Geometric sans

A sans-serif built from circle, square and triangle: round O, single-storey a, near-even stroke (Futura, Avant Garde). Looks clean and modern; tiring in long text.

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Grotesque (grotesk)

A sans-serif with 19th-century roots: nearly even stroke, fairly closed curves, often a two-storey a and g. Akzidenz-Grotesk and Franklin Gothic are grotesques; Helvetica and Univers are later ‘neo-grotesques’. On this site the word names the class of a typeface when the exact face is not confirmed.

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Humanist sans

A sans-serif whose proportions come from handwriting and Roman capitals: open apertures, letters of varied width, a trace of stroke modulation (Gill Sans, Optima, Frutiger). Reads well small and from a distance, hence its use in signage.

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Kerning

Adjusting the space between one specific pair of letters (AV, To, LT) so that the gaps look even. Matters most at poster size, where a font’s default spacing visibly falls apart.

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Leading (line spacing)

The vertical distance from one baseline to the next, named after the strips of lead once placed between lines of metal type. Tight leading makes a dark, compact block; generous leading lets in air. In a Swiss grid the leading is the smallest unit from which the whole grid is derived.

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Legibility and readability

Legibility: how easily single letters and words are recognised. Readability: how comfortably a whole text can be read. A poster may sacrifice the first on purpose to win attention; a book cannot sacrifice the second.

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Lettering

Letters drawn for one specific job instead of being set from a font. Each letter can be shaped to its neighbours and to the image, which is why a lettered poster or film title rarely looks like a typeface.

Letterspacing (tracking)

Even space added to or removed from all the letters of a word or line; software calls it tracking. Wide spacing makes capitals calm and formal; tight spacing packs a word into a block or a single shape. Not the same as kerning, which adjusts single pairs.

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Ligature

Two or more letters joined into one glyph (fi, fl, æ). Herb Lubalin turned it into an expressive device: letters that touch, overlap and share strokes.

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Logotype (wordmark)

A name set or drawn as a fixed piece of lettering that works as the mark itself (IBM, olivetti). It carries the name directly, whereas a symbol has to be learned first.

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Lowercase

The small letters. Their ascenders and descenders give every word its own silhouette, which is why running text reads faster in lowercase. Setting everything in lowercase was a modernist statement (Herbert Bayer at the Bauhaus).

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Monogram

Two or more initials combined into one sign — interlaced, stacked or sharing strokes.

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Phototypesetting

Setting type photographically, from film images of the letters, instead of casting metal (roughly the 1950s to the 1980s). It freed spacing: letters could suddenly touch, overlap and be distorted — the technical basis of Lubalin’s tight 1960s typography.

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Pictogram

A simplified figure that carries meaning without words: a person walking, a cup, an arrow. A pictogram system (Otl Aicher’s for Munich 1972) works only when every sign obeys the same grid, angles and stroke.

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Rebus

Pictures standing in for sounds or syllables — an eye and a bee for I-B. The viewer has to perform the reading, and that is why the message sticks.

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Sans-serif

Type without serifs, the small finishing strokes at the ends of letters. The broad family splits into grotesques, geometric and humanist sans.

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Serif

The short finishing stroke at the end of a letter’s main strokes, and by extension a typeface that has them (Garamond, Bodoni, Clarendon). In small text serifs help the eye along the line; at poster size they become part of the image.

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Slab serif

A serif type whose serifs are heavy blocks, almost as thick as the stems (Clarendon, Rockwell). Born for 19th-century posters and advertising; it reads loud and mechanical.

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Type specimen

A sheet or booklet in which a foundry shows a typeface: alphabets, sizes, sample text. Specimens are a primary source for when a typeface existed and how its makers meant it to be used.

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Vernacular

The everyday, non-professional visual language of shop signs, packaging, handbills and street lettering. Designers quote it to borrow its directness and its street credibility.

Wood type

Large letters cut from wood for 19th-century posters and handbills, when metal was too heavy and expensive at that size. Its chunky, condensed, often mismatched forms are the source of much ‘vernacular’ poster lettering.

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x-height

The height of lowercase letters without ascenders (x, a, o), measured from the baseline. Two fonts at the same point size can look very different in size because of it; a large x-height reads better when small.

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Alignment (flush left, justified)

How lines of text meet their edges. Flush left, ragged right keeps word spacing even — the Swiss default; a good rag is shaped by hand so it makes no accidental holes or steps. Justified text has two straight edges, bought with uneven word spacing.

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Asymmetric layout

Balance without a central axis: a large mass on one side answered by space or a small accent on the other. The New Typography of the 1920s made it the modern norm against centred, classical layout.

Bleed

An image or colour field that runs off the trimmed edge of the page. Printers extend it a few millimetres past the trim so no white line appears. For the designer it means the image is no longer framed: it continues beyond the format.

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Crop

Cutting an image down to the part that matters. A tight crop enlarges a detail beyond life size and puts tension on the edges; where you cut decides what the image says.

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Figure–ground

The relation between a shape (figure) and what surrounds it (ground). When both read as shapes at once — a vase that is also two faces — the image flips. Shigeo Fukuda built whole posters on that flip.

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Flatplan

A miniature map of a whole publication, page by page, used to plan the sequence and pacing of an issue before any single page is designed.

Fore-edge (book block)

The front edge of a book’s page block, opposite the spine. Usually ignored; Irma Boom treats it as a page in its own right.

Grid

A set of invisible columns, rows and margins that decides where things may go. It makes a series of pages or posters coherent and speeds up decisions. Swiss designers derived it from the type size and leading, so that text and images share one measure.

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Gutter

The space between two columns, or the inner margin where facing pages meet at the binding.

Hierarchy

The order in which the eye reads the elements: first, second, third. Built with size, weight, colour, position and space. If everything shouts, nothing is read first.

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Masthead

The title of a magazine or newspaper as it appears on the cover or front page. Usually fixed for decades; David Carson’s Ray Gun changed it every issue.

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Spread

Two facing pages seen together. Since Brodovitch, magazine designers treat the spread rather than the single page as the unit of layout: an image can run across the fold and pull both pages into one composition.

White space (negative space)

The unprinted part of the page. In modernist design it is an active element that frames, separates and directs, not leftover area waiting to be filled.

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Binding

How pages are held together. Perfect binding glues the sheets at the spine; saddle stitching staples folded sheets through the fold. Swiss binding attaches the block to the back cover only, so the book opens flat and the spine stays visible; Otabind is another lay-flat method.

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Coated and uncoated paper

Coated paper has a mineral surface that keeps ink sitting on top: sharp dots, deep blacks, gloss or silk. Uncoated paper absorbs ink: softer, flatter colour and a warmer feel. The same file looks different on each.

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Colour separation

Splitting an image into one film or plate per ink — traditionally four for CMYK. Bradbury Thompson printed single separations of one photograph as images in their own right.

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Die-cut

Cutting paper or board to a shape with a steel-rule die: windows in a cover, shaped edges, holes that reveal the page underneath.

Duotone

A photograph printed from two plates of the same image in two inks, often black plus a colour, for richer tone or a coloured cast. Used flat and in strong colours, it turns a photograph into a graphic sign.

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Embossing (debossing)

Pressing a raised (embossed) or sunken (debossed) relief into paper with a die. Blind embossing uses no ink at all: the image exists only as light and shadow.

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Gravure (photogravure)

Printing from tiny cells etched into a copper plate or cylinder; deeper cells hold more ink. It gives rich, continuous photographic tone — used for illustrated magazines and for Herbert Matter’s Swiss tourism posters of the 1930s.

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Halftone

How print fakes grey: a photograph is broken into dots of varying size — big dots read dark, small ones light. A coarse screen makes the dots visible and turns them into texture, as Cieślewicz and Weingart did on purpose.

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Letterpress

Printing from raised surfaces — metal or wood type, engraved blocks — pressed into the paper. The standard way to print text until the 1950s; it leaves a slight bite in the paper and uneven ink at the edges.

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Linocut

Like a woodcut, but carved in linoleum: softer, without grain, cheap. Bold shapes and solid areas; a staple of posters and protest prints.

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Lithography

Printing from a flat stone or plate on which the image attracts greasy ink while the wet rest repels it. Early poster artists drew straight onto the stone; after the Second World War ‘lithograph’ in a poster record usually means offset.

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Moiré

A shimmering interference pattern that appears when two regular grids — halftone screens, lines, fabrics — overlap at a slight angle. A printing fault, or a deliberate optical effect.

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Offset lithography

The dominant commercial printing method since the mid-20th century. It is lithographic: ink on a flat plate is transferred (‘offset’) to a rubber blanket and from there onto paper. Fine halftones, long runs, low cost — which is why most posters on this site are recorded as ‘offset lithograph’.

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Overprint

Printing one ink on top of another without knocking the lower one out, so they mix where they overlap and give a third colour for free. A favourite device of two-colour design.

Paste-up (mechanical)

Before desktop publishing, the final artwork assembled by hand — type proofs, drawings and crop marks glued onto board, with overlays and instructions for the printer — and then photographed to make the plates.

Photocopy (xerox)

Copying with dry toner. Each generation loses grey tones and gains grain, so repeated copying turns photographs into harsh black and white — the look of punk flyers and fanzines.

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Process colours (CMYK)

Cyan, magenta, yellow and black printed as overlapping halftone dots to reproduce colour photographs. Versatile but duller than spot inks; colours outside its range, such as bright orange or fluorescent pink, cannot be printed this way.

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Registration

Aligning separately printed colours so that they fall exactly on top of one another. When they miss, thin white or coloured edges appear; Bradbury Thompson and Muriel Cooper used that shift deliberately.

Repro camera (stat camera)

A large camera used in prepress to shoot artwork onto film at a chosen size and to make halftones and high-contrast conversions. How far it could enlarge and how much grey it kept set the limits of pre-digital image manipulation.

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Risograph

A Japanese stencil duplicator from the 1980s that prints one spot colour per drum. Cheap and fast, with visible grain and loose registration; adopted by zines and independent studios since the 2000s.

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Screen printing

Ink pushed through a fine mesh, with a stencil blocking the areas that stay blank. Thick, opaque, very saturated colour on almost any surface, and cheap for short runs — favoured by activists, Pop artists and Corita Kent.

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Screen tint

A flat area printed at a percentage of one ink (say 30% black) by an even dot screen: a lighter shade without a second ink.

Spot colour (Pantone)

A single ink mixed to an exact colour and printed from its own plate, instead of being built from the four process colours. Brighter and more reliable than CMYK: fluorescents, metallics and signature brand colours are spot inks. Pantone is the standard matching system.

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Stencil

A sheet with cut-out shapes through which paint is brushed or sprayed. Stencil letters need bridges to hold their inner parts (the middle of O), which gives them their broken, industrial look.

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Woodcut (wood engraving)

A relief print from a block of wood carved along the grain; the marks of the knife stay visible. Wood engraving, cut into the end grain, allows much finer detail — the illustrations of 19th-century books and catalogues.

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Airbrush

A small spray gun for paint that gives smooth gradients and soft edges — the look of commercial illustration and photo retouching before digital tools.

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Collage

A composition glued together from any materials — paper, print, fabric, photographs. Unlike photomontage, the pieces don’t pretend to share one space; their edges are part of the picture.

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Complementary colours

Colour pairs that sit opposite each other on the colour wheel: red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet. Side by side they intensify each other; mixed they neutralise towards grey.

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Cut paper

Shapes cut or torn from coloured paper and laid flat. The edges stay slightly irregular, and that is what separates it from vector drawing.

Flat colour

A uniform area of ink with no gradient, texture or halftone. It reads from far away, prints cleanly and makes every colour decision visible.

Gradient (split fountain)

A smooth transition from one colour or tone to another. In screen printing and letterpress it can be made in a single pass by loading two inks on the same squeegee or roller — a ‘split fountain’ or ‘rainbow roll’.

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Photogram

A photograph made without a camera: objects laid on light-sensitive paper and exposed, leaving white silhouettes on black. Man Ray called his ‘rayographs’; László Moholy-Nagy made the photogram a Bauhaus method.

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Photomontage

An image assembled from pieces of photographs so that the joins create a new meaning — two realities in one frame. John Heartfield used it as a political weapon; Herbert Matter and Roman Cieślewicz as a poster language.

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Posterisation

Reducing a photograph’s continuous tones to a few flat levels — two, three or four — each printed as a solid colour. Otl Aicher’s Munich 1972 posters turned sport photographs into graphics this way.

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Primary and secondary colours

Primaries are the base colours of a mixing system: red, yellow and blue in the painter’s tradition; cyan, magenta and yellow in print; red, green and blue on screen. Secondaries are mixtures of two primaries — orange, green and violet on the painter’s wheel. Modernist design leaned on primaries; choosing secondaries instead is itself a decision.

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Saturation

How intense a colour is, from grey to full colour. Two fully saturated complementary colours side by side vibrate optically; desaturated colours recede.

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Solarisation

A partial reversal of tones in a photograph, caused by exposing it to light again during development: dark outlines and silvery, half-negative areas.

Squint test

Half-close your eyes, or blur the image, and look again: detail disappears and only masses, tonal values and the strongest shapes remain. The quickest test of whether a poster works at a distance — the lightbox on this site has a squint button.

Tonal value

How light or dark an area is, regardless of its hue. Blur a design or view it in greyscale and only tonal values remain; if the composition still holds, it will hold from across the street.

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Corporate identity

The complete visual system of an organisation — mark, logotype, colours, typefaces, layouts and the rules for applying them — so that everything it produces is recognisably from one source. Postwar companies such as IBM, Lufthansa and Mobil turned it into a design discipline.

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Ident

A few seconds of motion that identify a channel, brand or event between programmes: the moving version of a logo. It follows the same rules as a mark — one idea, recognisable at once, repeatable.

Kinetic typography

Type in motion, animated so that timing, rhythm and movement carry part of the meaning. Its roots lie in Saul Bass’s title sequences and in Muriel Cooper’s experiments with type on screen.

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Lower third

Text in the lower part of a video frame — a name, a title, a place — placed where it doesn’t cover faces. It must stay legible over any background, so it is usually a clean sans on a band or with a shadow.

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Mark (logo, trademark)

The sign that stands for an organisation: a symbol (the Chase octagon, the Lufthansa crane), a logotype, or both combined. A good mark still works tiny, in one colour, in negative and blurred — the tests used throughout this site.

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Signage and wayfinding

Signs that let people find their way through a building, airport, transit system or city. They must be read in seconds, from a distance, on the move and in bad light — the test that shaped Adrian Frutiger’s airport typeface and Otl Aicher’s pictograms.

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Standards manual

The rule book of an identity: how the mark is drawn and spaced, which colours and typefaces are allowed, grids for every application. Unimark’s 1970 New York subway manual and Vignelli’s Unigrid for the National Park Service are classics. The manual is what lets an identity outlive its designer.

Title sequence

The opening (or closing) credits of a film, designed as a short film of its own that sets the tone before the story begins. Saul Bass turned it from a list of names into a graphic overture.

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