Decoding the mumbo-jumbo
All industries seem to have their own internal jargon and abbreviations which become common parlance to those within the trade and mystify those outside of it. We thought we’d try and pull together a series of articles explaining commonly used design and print jargon as a useful guide for our clients. If you’ve encountered any confusing design or print jargon that we’ve missed off please drop us a line and let us know and we’ll add it to the list.

AC’s – Authors Amends/Corrections
These are amendments/corrections made to the artwork by the client during proofing and are generally charged for.

Banding
When a graduated/blended tint is reproduced by some printing systems it can produce banding, which is an uneven transition of colour as the increment of the tint is increased or decreased. The resulting finish is always compromised and undesirable. Care should be taken when designing and proofing a job with large graduated tints to avoid this.

Bleed
This is an area of print that extends beyond the page edge and allows the page to be accurately trimmed down to size without a white border. Not adding a bleed is one of the most common mistakes that result in artwork being rejected by a printer.

CMYK
Refers to the common method for full colour printing using: C – Cyan, M – Magenta, Y – Yellow, and K – Black inks (key colour). You will also hear the term ‘CMYK split’ referring to the exact make up of individual colours.

Coated / Uncoated paper
The vast majority of papers used in commercial print are finished with a thin coating this helps their ink retention and colour reproduction generally producing a brighter crisper finish to the print. However the trade off is they tend to lose some of the softness to touch of high grade paper made with cotton fibres or similar and they aren’t great at taking pen inks on top of the finished print. Uncoated papers have a much wider variety of touch finishes with a softer feel to them, but they do suffer from a generally duller print finish as the ink tends spread and lose some intensity on the page.

Crop Marks / Registration Marks
These are the lines and marks added after the proofing process at the edge of the paper helping the printer line up the printing plates and ensure the design prints accurately and indicating where the paper should be cut.

Die Cut
A post-print finishing process of cutting a leaflet or brochure to a pre-formed shape eg. a circle or wavey line.

Dimensions
Traditionally, in graphic design, measurements are given in the order of depth and width (DW – alphabetical). These days the convention has lapsed so it is always safer to specify what dimensions are being given (eg. 240d x 120w).

Digital Printing
Digital printing systems print directly from computer to paper using data fed into the press, and do not require intermediate media such as film or plates. Digital printing is most cost effective for very small print runs and usually benefits from a short turn around time compared to litho/offset printing.

Dot gain
Dot gain describes the ‘spread’ of ink outside the original size of each of the ink dots making up an image. It is most prevalent in lower quality paper stocks and when lower quality print screening has been used such as in Newspaper print. Other dot gain variables include the inks and the condition of the press. In effect, dot gain can produce an over saturation of colour which is not always desirable as a consequence of increased ink density.

DPI (Dots Per Inch)
Refers to the resolution or quality of images. The higher the DPI, the better the quality of the image. The industry standard resolution for print is 300dpi.

Dummy
A paper sample mock-up of a proposed job made from the actual paper materials and cut to size, with binding finish and correct paper bulk.

Finishing
The general term we use to all the processes after the actual printing on paper (eg. trimming, binding, laminating).

Folio
Folios are the page numbers and document titles repeated throughout a publication, often at the bottom of a page.

Font / Typeface
In the digital age often confused and used interchangeably, traditionally there is actually a hierarchy. A Font is a single set of letters, numbers and symbols that share a single design. A typeface is the design and style of the font. Eg. Times and Times Bold are two separate fonts both are using the Times typeface.

Four Colour Process
The most common form of full colour printing uses a mix of four colours: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.

GSM
The standard measurement for paper thickness is GSM Grammes per square metre.

Gutter
The inside margins or blank space between 2 pages of a book or magazine is the gutter. The gutter space is important to ensure important information doesn’t disappear into the binding area between the pages, extra space should be allowed in large publications to ensure this doesn’t happen.

Laminate
A transparent coating added to covers to give protection and smooth finish. This can be a gloss, silk or matt finish.

Moiré
An undesirable optical effect created by an unwanted interaction between separation plates or misalignment, the image will seem to shimmer. The effect can also appear when a pre-screened image is re-screened for reproduction, for example, when scanning a printed original.