5 design terms everyone needs to know

Learning the design lingo is important for everyone because it helps everyone appreciate the design process. It is crucial to know what you are dealing with same way it’s important to know what you are buying when in a supermarket. Knowing the rules of the shop also helps make the design process smoother and you are able to appreciate each step during the progression of the design process. In the same way we carry our visa cards to the supermarket and don’t expect discounts for purchases, it is crucial to understand the perimeters within which design operates.

  1. Design brief

A creative brief is the core of the client service process and may lead to the success or failure of the creative output. The creative brief is a descriptive document that containing information about the client, what they do, how they do it and explains their requirements for the project. Our briefing process is aimed at collecting comprehensive information from the client in order to eliminate any ambiguities in the design process. We always urge our clients to take this step very seriously and not address it hurriedly in a bid to ‘get to the fun part’ because it is the basis of the entire project. It tells the story of the project – why it is to be undertaken and provides a strategic foundation on how it is to be undertaken and for whom it is intended.

It is this strategic input that enables us to provide an effective design solution to the clients business and not merely a decorative art piece.

  1. Design scope

The scope outlines the general aims and goals of the project design and lists the major deliverables and milestones.  Project scope management plan is a planning tool that documents how the project team will go about defining project scope, how the work breakdown structure will be developed, how changes to scope will be controlled, and how the work of the project will be verified and accepted. This document is important because it keeps everyone on their proverbial ‘side of the fence’. It contains the following crucial elements:

  • The project scope statement contains a detailed description of the project deliverables.
  • A process for creating the work breakdown structure (WBS). The WBS further defines the work of the project (as defined in the scope statement) by breaking down the deliverables into smaller pieces of work.
  • A definition of how the deliverables will be verified for accuracy and the process used for accepting deliverables.
  • A description of the process for controlling scope change requests, including the procedure for requesting changes and how to obtain a change request form.

 

  1. Logo vs. Brand

According to creative bloq, a great logo works as a reminder of a company or product, for designers they represent the challenge of encapsulating a client’s essence into a single graphic.

What a logo design isn’t, though, is branding. While the logo is usually the stand-out part of a brand, there’s much more to branding than a logo. A good brand identity is carefully built out of a number of elements, and the logo will reflect these elements and work within the brand system.

But creating or refreshing a brand can be a massive undertaking, involving a deep understanding of the brand’s personality, how it’s perceived, its history and function and much more.

  1. Resolution: DPI vs. PPI

Resolution is a measure of dots per inch (DPI) for printed works and pixels per inch (PPI) for digital work. If the resolution of an image is too low, your final product will come out looking grainy or pixelated. Even if you’re smart phone shoots 41 megapixels, trust your designer if he or she says the image won’t work (Rebecca Swift).

  1. Typography

This is the art of using typefaces to communicate. This skill encompasses both the typefaces and the negative space surrounding them. Typeface research is a process that takes up a lot of time during the design especially of logos and brands because the font selected sets the ‘mood’ and ‘feel’ for your brand.

You will want to know something about fonts because the two convey different feelings. Serif fonts have a line crossing the ending of a stroke and are sometimes described as having “wings” and “tips.” Serif fonts like Times New Roman make printed materials easier to read but can be difficult to read in online body copy.