Glossary of graphic design terms and concepts, beginning with the letter A.
A
Additive Color
colloq. Additive Colour
Additive colors are produced by light. The more light produced, the brighter the colors. This is in direct contrast to subtractive colors.
Red, green and blue are the primary additive colors and are used in computer monitors.
extend. Jaggies, bitmapped, aliased
Aliasing is the description given to jagged edges on curves and diagonal lines in bitmap images. They can be more easily seen if the image is enlarged to above 100% of its size.
Aliasing is unavoidable to some degree with on-screen images because of the fact that computer screens use pixels that run horizontally and vertically. In printed images, the jaggies can be avoided by using a digital image with a high enough resolution.
Anti-aliasing is the process whereby the jagged 'aliased' edges of a bitmapped image, or on-screen font, are smoothed.
Anti-aliasing can be achieved via a number of processes. The most common of which is done with an image editor such as Photoshop, which has a number of tools and settings for achieving an anti-alaised effect. Sometimes an anti-alias is actually undesirable. For example, when displaying small fonts on-screen it is generally clearer to leave the fonts aliased.
An ever changing and much disputed term. Art directors were traditionally the creative lead in the advertising industry. They were responsible for thinking up the creative briefs of an advertising campaign, photo-shoots and so on.
In recent years it has become more fashionable for some agencies to ascribe the term art director to senior designers (and even some less than senior designers).
extend. finished artist, typesetter, compositor, graphic artist
Artworkers were traditionally specialists who implemented the creative brief, as given to them by a graphic designer or art director. To some degree, in recent years - with the advent of desktop publishing - these terms have blurred somewhat, with many graphic designers (and even art directors) doing their own artworking.
Artworkers are usually highly proficient in a number of the basic graphics software applications, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, QuarkXpress and InDesign. They will be able to take a brief and implement it according to the brief and finish it so that it is ready for pre-press or print production.
