As experts in web design in Surrey, the developers and designers at Thunderbolt Digital can sometimes get a little carried away and forget that not everyone knows what they’re talking about – and they’re not the only ones! It’s natural to want to understand what exactly is going on with the development of your website, so brushing up on these design terms will allow you to get up to speed that much quicker at your next check in.
The Fold
This one can be pretty confusing if you’ve never heard it before – it conjures images of newspapers and magazines, and you may be completely lost as to what that could mean for a website. But it’s actually as simple as it sounds – “the fold” is simply the bottom of the page of a website as is first visible when it loads; anything you need to scroll down to see is referred to as “below the fold”.
UX
UX stands for User Experience and is something that is of utmost priority across web design and development – it’s how a user interacts with your site, and the conclusions they’ll come to as a result. Attempting to improve a user’s experience with design by working on accessibility and user-friendliness can be known as UXD (Use Experience Design).
SVG
No SVG isn’t a type of truck, it’s actually a file format, such as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, or PNG. However, in SVG’s case, its initials stand for Scalable Vector Graphics. It’s popular amongst designers as it can be scaled up (you can make the image bigger with no loss of quality), compressed, and used in animation.
Negative Space
Negative may seem like a worrying word to be used for your website, but there’s no need for concern! Like photo negatives are the reverse of the snapshot taken, negative space is simply blank space on a web page, and is neither inherently good or bad. Negative space is essential for any good website, but the amount must be balanced – simply hearing that your website has “negative space” doesn’t mean it needs to be removed, you only need to worry if there is too much or too little.