Design Words of Wisdom
I have been a lover of words and spelling since I was a little kid. I even tried-out for the Spelling Bee once (the class brain, Scott Borgelt, beat me out - bastard). To this day, interesting and unique words intrigue me and I automatically take a mental time-out to think of how some words are spelled, for my own nerdy pleasure.
In the graphic design world, there are many words that I like - not only for the way they're spelled, but also for the way they sound.
So, I thought I'd take a moment and provide you all with some of my favorite words in the graphic design vocabulary.
I guess my favorite word is "nomenclature". I hardly ever use it, but I was able to put it in a sentence in an email I sent out yesterday. It's a great word. Another one is "ligature". I love that one and I also love what they do for me in typography. Speaking of typography, how about the word "typeface"? It just sounds good. The word "font" sounds like a car horn or breaking wind. (I know, a typeface and a font are two different things, but I'm not splitting hairs here.)
How about design "assets"? I know, not a hard word to spell, but this one sounds smart and sort of high-class. The word "deliverables" has the same ring to it. How about "continuity" and "repetition"? Wonderful design principles that look as good as they sound in real-world practice.
Granted, some of my favorite words in graphic design aren't only used in this industry, but they're ours and I'm keeping them.
I think it's good to think about words and spelling, at times. Some of us are better at this than others, but with practice, we can all eventually figure out the difference between "your" and "you're". Let's hope!
Or there, their, they're and affect vs effect; and I grew up using the word perogative (some cutesy phrase pre-teen kids used to be smart: Well, that's your perogative!) but never had to actually write the word. So I looked it up just to be sure and discovered it's not spelled as my mind pictured it or like we all pronounced it. It's prerogative--and it's hard to look up if you've got it all wrong to start with!
Words are never adequate for the visually acclimated--after all, it takes a million to describe what we can say without a word.