10 Things you need to know about Graphic Design

10 Things I Think You Need To Know About Graphic Design:


1) Pantone is the main colour matching system know by all graphic design industries.

There are many different pantone swatches including:

Solid Colour FORMULA GUIDES: One flat colour 

• FORMULA GUIDE Solid Coated
• FORMULA GUIDE Solid Uncoated

COLOUR BRIDGE Guides:

To determine how a PANTONE Color will appear when reproduced in CMYK or to create optimal display of PANTONE Colors on monitors and Web pages

• COLOR BRIDGE Coated
• COLOR BRIDGE Uncoated
• COLOR BRIDGE® Supplement Coated
• COLOR BRIDGE® Supplement Uncoated

CMYK Guides:

Four colour process (cyan, magenta, yellow, black)

• CMYK Coated
• CMYK Uncoated

PANTONE METALLICS Guide

• METALLICS Coated
• PREMIUM METALLICS Coated

PASTELS & NEONS guide

• PASTELS & NEONS Coated & Uncoated

There in the picture is also shown a linen tester this is to view which printing method had been used to created the print final piece.





2) No more than 3 fonts in one design.

The only quantitative rule for design is the “Rule of 3.” When you start tweaking the fonts of your document, be sure to apply no more than three typefaces per design (or page). That’s not to say that you can’t use multiple styles within a font family (i.e. Neutra Bold for headlines and Neutra Thin for photo credits), just be mindful of not mixing too many typefaces and styles–fight the temptation to blend Impact, Courier, Lucinda and Trebuchet in the same document. While there might be a few exceptions to this rule, it’s a good sanity check, to ensure that you don’t go overboard and over-complicate your design. And as a good rule of thumb, you should probably just avoid Papyrus and Comic Sans. Always. Just take our word for it.




3) Need to understand colour modes.

Available colour systems are dependent on the medium with which a designer is working. When painting, an artist has a variety of paints to choose from, and mixed colours are achieved through the subtractive colour method. When a designer is utilizing the computer to generate digital media, colours are achieved with the additive colour method.

Subtractive Colour

When we mix colours using paint, or through the printing process, we are using the subtractive colour method. Subtractive colour mixing means that one begins with white and ends with black; as one adds colour, the result gets darker and tends to black.
Subtractive colour systems start with light, presumably white light. Coloured inks, paints, or filters between the viewer and the light source or reflective surface subtract wavelengths from the light, giving it colour. If the incident light is other than white, our visual mechanisms are able to compensate well, but not perfectly, often giving a flawed impression of the "true" colour of the surface.

The CMYK colour system is the colour system used for printing.

All desktop and professional printers mix four different ink colors — (C)yan, (M)agenta, (Y)ellow and (K)ey (Black) which is abbreviated as CMYK.  These four colours can be mixed together in varying amounts and produce thousands of different shades and hues on paper.

Additive Colour

If we are working on a computer, the colours we see on the screen are created with light using the additive colour method. Additive colour mixing begins with black and ends with white; as more colour is added, the result is lighter and tends to white.

Additive colour systems start without light (black). Light sources of various wavelengths combine to make a colour. In either type of system, three primary colours are combined to stimulate humans’ trichromatic colour vision, sensed by the three types of cone cells in the eye, giving an apparently full range.

The RGB colours are light primaries and colours are created with light.

4) You need to know how many points in one pica.

There are 12 points in 1 pica.
For many, the measurement system of choice for typesetting and publication design is picas and points.

• A point is a unit of measurement that is the standard for measuring type and is used for measuring depth of printing. One point is equal to .013836 of an inch and 72 points are approximately 1 inch.
• A pica is a typesetting unit of measurement commonly used for measuring lines of type. One pica equals 12 points. There are 6 picas to an inch.
• A standard US letter size page is 8.5 by 11 inches or 51 by 66 picas. (6 picas are approximately 25 mm)
• The letter p is used to designate picas as in 22p or 6p. With 12 points to the pica, half a pica would be 6 points written as 0p6. 17 points would be 1p5 (1 pica = 12 pts, plus the leftover 5 pts). 

5)  Need to know the difference between font & typeface.



Typeface 

 
The letters, numbers, and symbols that make up a design of type. A typeface is often part of a type family of coordinated designs. The individual typefaces are named after the family and are also specified with a designation, such as italic, bold or condensed

Font

One weight, width, and style of a typeface. Before scalable type, there was little distinction between the terms font, face, and family. Font and face still tend to be used interchangeably, although the term face is usually more correct.




6) Never use comic sans

7) You must know the different between typeface & font.

Block- fonts should be used for display headers

Gothic- fonts are sans-serif and are Simply in form

Roman- fonts are standard serif fonts

Script- fonts are brush, handwritten or are made to resemble these characteristics

8) An understanding of semotics.

Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning.

Definitions of semiotic terms

Sign: Any motion, gesture, image, sound, pattern, or event that conveys meaning.

Symbol: A person, place, action, word, or thing that (by association, resemblance, or convention) represents something other than itself. 

Signifier: A linguistic unit or pattern, such as a succession of speech sounds, written symbols, or gestures, that conveys meaning; a linguistic sign.

9) Need to have an understanding of colour wheel.

Primary Colours: Red, yellow and blue
In traditional colour theory (used in paint and pigments), primary colours are the 3 pigment colours that can not be mixed or formed by any combination of other colours. All other colours are derived from these 3 hues. 

Secondary Colours: Green, orange and purple
These are the colours formed by mixing the primary colours.

Tertiary Colours: Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green & yellow-green
These are the colours formed by mixing a primary and a secondary colour. That's why the hue is a two word name, such as blue-green, red-violet, and yellow-orange.





10) Need to have a clear understand of anatomy of type. 

Arm/Leg

The arm or leg of a character is its stroke that is attached on one end but isn’t attached on another. An arm or a leg can be horizontal such as the middle stroke extending from a lowercase “t” or diagonal such as the strokes coming from a lowercase “k.”

Cap line

A cap line is an imaginary line spanning the top of a capital character. The cap size is the distance between a character’s baseline and the cap line.

Ascender

An ascender is the upwards stem of a lower-case character that rises above the x-height. Characters with typical ascenders are h and b.

Baseline

The baseline is an imaginary line upon which all of your type characters rest. In most designs, the aim is to have all type characters in line along a baseline. However, many designers choose to break this rule with non-symmetric designs.

Descender

A descender is the portion of a lower-case character extending below the baseline. Common characters with descenders include “g” and “y.”

Sans Serif

Sans Serif fonts are characterized by their non-varying stroke widths. They are often considered more modern type options and are optimal for most online environments.

Serif 

Serif fonts are characterized by their varying stroke widths and decorative elements on the end of each character. These fonts are viewed are more classic type options and are traditionally used in novels and other print reading materials.

X-height  

The x-height is the middle portion of a character minus any ascenders and descenders. An easier way to determine the x-height in a string of text is to set it at the height of a lowercase “x.”