In this, our wonderful world of creative marketing, design and production, there are a lot of buzzwords and terms in everyday use. So we thought we’d compile the most commonly heard, queried by clients and used at Ellis Smeaton, to try and provide a decent foundation – a good tool we think, especially if you are new to the industry.
This is by no means exhaustive, and we’ve barely started on the endless number of acronyms, so we’ll be sure to add to it as needs be.
If any of the terms that follow need a bit more explaining, or you are looking for a creative agency to help you out with any of them, get in touch, we’d love to help.
DPS – double page spread
SP – single page
CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black) – colours used for printed items
RGB – Red, Green and Blue – used for digital artwork
Pantone/Spot colour – a specific colour generally used for logos and text for consistency in brand identity
gsm – grams per square metre, paper weight
Coated/uncoated – paper/card stock with a smooth or shiny finish (colours will look different and duller on uncoated stock)
Proof – a one off digital print of the final design for approval before a print run
Mask – part of the artwork that identifies the area you want to UV or Foil
Digital printing – great for short print runs and economic up to a few hundred copies
Litho printing – more economic for long print runs and special or spot colours can be used
Saturation – too much ink due to layers of dark texture and images can cause printing problems
Mock-up – a one off printed item made up, often by hand e.g. packaging for sign off
Cutter guide – shows the printer where to cut and crease for 3D items like boxes and POS
Spot UV – varnish over print to add high shine to specific areas
Foiling/Foil stamping – add a metallic finish to any area – often headline text or logos
Deboss – recessed copy/images
Emboss – raised copy/images
Gloss/matt lamination – a shiny or velvety finish to the printed items
Die cut – specific images/areas cut out completely of a sheet
Kiss cut – a light impression cut, perfect for stickers – only goes part way through a sheet
Stitched/Saddle stitch binding – stapling on the spine to assemble a brochure
Perfect binding – gluded sections along the spine for thicker documents
PUR binding – A form of perfect binding using a durable, flexible Polyurethane Reactive adhesive.
Screw bound – use of metal screws to assemble a thick prestigious booklet
Hard cover/Case bound – glued in rigid cover like a book
DPI – Dots Per Inch, 300 is ideal for print and 72 is considered acceptable for on-screen
Bleed – carrying the image/ background over the specified dimensions. Used to help the printer when trimming
Crop marks – show the printer where to cut
Gradient – fade from one colour to another, great for giving the impression of metallic finishes
Vignette (PhotoShop) – fade from one colour to another, great for giving the impression of metallic finishes
Shadow – helps an image to appear more realistic or stand out against a background
Ghosted image/text – the opacity is reduced to give a layered effect
3D render – a computer generated image – commonly used for packaging proposals and interior presentations
Web safe fonts – fonts that the vast majority of devices support, so they will display correctly on screen/online
Serif fonts – small lines attached to the end of each stroke e.g. Times New Roman
Sans serif fonts – no small lines on the end of each stroke – e.g. Arial
Ampersand – & – meaning ‘and’
Kerning – space between each individual character in a word
Tracking – space between all letters in a word or sentence
Leading – space between rows of text
Widow/orphan – a single word left on its own on a new line of text – proofreaders are not fans of this!
Justified text – squared off copy on all outside edges to form a full column (often causes spacing problems)
JPEG/JPG – (Joint Photographic Experts Group) an image file everyone can open
PNG – an image file – best for web
INDD – an InDesign file – contains all the formatting, content, styles linked files* that have been used to create an artwork
EPS – for Vectors, best for Logos
PSD – (PhotoShop Document) PhotoShop file – used for layered images
Ai – (Adobe Illustrator) Illustrator file – used for images that are not layered
PDF – (Portable Document Format) a document file for proofing and printing
Vector – an image file that doesn’t pixelate when you zoom in
*Linked files – all of the images used to create the artwork
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