I created these poster designs over the summer. They are free to download and print for educational purposes. The posters have been created in a large format but can be printed at any size. I created these for my own classrooms where I teach video production, graphic design, web design and digital photography. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the download link... if you repost please attribute credit.
Typography Poster:
Color Theory Poster A:
Color Theory Poster B:
Elements of Design Poster:
Principals of Design Poster:
Download the entire poster 8.1 Mb pdf file set by clicking here.
Typography is, quite simply, the art and technique of arranging type. It's central to the skills of a designer and is about much more than making the words legible. Your choice of typeface and how you make it work with your layout, grid, colour scheme, design theme and so on will make the difference between a good, bad and great design.
There are lots of typography tutorials around to help you master the discipline. But good typography is often down to creative intuition. Once you're comfortable with the basics, visit some typography resources to investigate font families and discover some font pairings that are made for each other.
Choosing a font
There's an astonishing array of paid-for and free fonts to choose from online. But with great power comes great responsibility. Just because you can choose from a vast library doesn't mean you have to; there's something to be said for painting with a limited palette, and tried and tested fonts like Helvetica continue to serve us well.
There is a vast selection of typefaces for you to choose from
A typeface, like any form of design, is created by craftsmen over a substantial period of time, using the talent they've been honing for many years. And the benefits of a professionally designed font – various weights and styles to form a complete family, carefully considered kerning pairs, multi-language support with international characters, expressive alternate glyphs to add character and variety to type-setting – are not always found in a font available for free.
Here are some of the most important typographic considerations the professional designers needs to take into account.
01. Size
All typefaces are not created equally. Some are fat and wide; some are thin and narrow. So words set in different typefaces can take up a very different amount of space on the page.
The height of each character is known as its 'x-height' (quite simply because it's based on the letter 'x'). When pairing typefaces – such as when using a different face to denote an area of attention – it's generally wise to use those that share a similar x-height. The width of each character is known as the 'set width', which spans the body of the letter plus a space that acts as a buffer with other letter.
The most common method used to measure type is the point system, which dates back to the 18th century. One point is 1/72 inch. 12 points make one pica, a unit used to measure column widths. Type sizes can also be measured in inches, millimetres, or pixels.
02. Leading
Leading describes the vertical space between each line of type. It's called this because strips of lead were originally used to separate lines of type in the days of metal typesetting.
For legible body text that's comfortable to read, a general rule is that your leading value should be greater than the font size; anywhere from 1.25 to 1.5 times.
03. Tracking and kerning
Kerning describes the act of adjusting the space between characters to create a harmonious pairing. For example, where an uppercase 'A' meets an uppercase 'V', their diagonal strokes are usually kerned so that the top left of the 'V' sits above the bottom right of the 'A'.
Kerning similar to, but not the same as, 'tracking'; this relates to the spacing of all characters and is applied evenly.
04. Measure
The term 'measure' describes the width of a text block. If you're seeking to achieve the optimum reading experience, it's clearly an important consideration.
05. Hierarchy and scale
If all type was the same size, it would be difficult to know which was the most important information on the page. In order to guide the reader, then, headings are usually large, sub-headings are smaller, and body type is smaller still.
Size is not the only way to define hierarchy – it can also be achieved with colour, spacing and weight.
Next page: Glossary of typography A-D
The glossary (A-D)
A visual guide to some common typography terms - see key below
Pronouced 'ash', this is a ligature of two letters – 'a' and 'e'. The aesc derives from Old English, where it represented a diphthong vowel, and has successfully migrated to other alphabets including Danish and Icelandic.
Aperture
You can see the aperture of the 'A' highlighted in red
The constricted opening of a glyph, as seen in the letter 'e'. Varying the size of the aperture has a direct effect on the legibility of a letterform and, ultimately, readability.
Apex
The point at the top of a character where the left and right strokes meet. The example shown in the header image is the top point of an uppercase 'A'.
Arm
A horizontal stroke that does not connect to a stroke or stem at one or both ends – such as the top of the capital T.
Ascender
The ascender projects above the x-height of the font
The part of a lowercase letterform that projects above the x-height of the font. Ascenders are important for ease of prolonged reading, though the combination of too much ascender-height and not enough x-height can cause problems.
Baseline
The baseline is where the feet of your capital letters sit. Below this line are descenders and loops.
Bowl
The shapely, enclosed parts of letters such as 'p' and 'b'.
Beak
The beak-shaped terminal at the top of letters such as 'a', 'c', 'f' and 'r'.
Bicameral (as opposed to unicameral)
Bicameral refers to alphabets that have upper- and lowercase letterforms, such as Roman and Cyrillic – as opposed to the likes of Hebrew and Arabic.
Bracket
A wedge-like shape that joins a serif to the stem of a font in some typefaces.
Cap height
The height of a capital letter above the baseline.
Copyfitting
The job of adjusting point size and letter spacing in a bid to make text occupy its allotted space in a harmonious fashion.
Counter
Counters are highlighted in red
The enclosed – or partially enclosed – portion of letterforms such as 'c', the lower part of 'e' and 'g'; easy to get mixed up with the bowl.
Crossbar
The crossbar connects two strokes, as in 'H'. Not to be confused with the crossstroke that cuts through the stem of letterforms such as 't'.
Cursive
These are typefaces that imitate handwriting. Ever popular with Joe Public, the design community is often less than thrilled by these sometimes flowery fonts.
Descender
The part of the letterform that falls below the baseline. In lowercase terms, this means 'p', 'y' and 'q', and sometimes applies to uppercase 'J' and 'Q'.
Diacritical
Diacritical marks – such as the grave shown here – indicate how a letter should be pronounced
Is it so critical that you might die? No. Diacriticals refer to accents applied to letterforms by languages including French, Czech and German in a bid to enhance the function of the glyph.
Dingbat
Dingbat are decorative elements such as bullets
Once known as printer's flowers, dingbats are decorative elements that can vary from simple bullets to delicate fauna and flora, often formed into themed collections.
Display fonts
Any typeface intended to be used in short bursts can be defined as a display font. They're often created just for use at large point sizes, as with headlines and titles.
Drop cap
The drop cap 'E' descends four lines
An oversized capital letter often used at the start of a paragraph that 'drops' into two or more lines of text, but can also climb upwards.
Next page: Glossary of typography E-L
Ear
A small stroke extending from the upper-right side of the bowl of lowercase g, as shown in the example. It can also appear in a lowercase r.
Ethel
A ligature of the letters 'o' and 'e'.
Em dash
There are many different types of 'dashes'
Often referred to as 'Mutton' to distinguish it from the very similar-sounding En, Em is a horizontal space equal to the current point size of text.
En dash
'Nut' to its friends, the En is a horizontal measure one half the size of an Em. That being the case, 'lamb' might have been more appropriate.
Eye
The eye is similar to a counter, but instead refers specifically to the enclosed part of the letter 'e'.
Finial
A tapered or curved end, which appears on letters such as e and c.
Fleuron
A subcategory of, or the precursor to, the dingbat. Fleurons are floral marks dreamed up by printers of the past to help decorate text.
<font-face>
The HTML5 tag that brings typography to the internet with typefaces directly embedded in web pages.
Glyph
Glyphs are the singular parts that make up a font
Any singular mark that makes part of a font, whether a letter, number, punctuation mark or even a dingbat. Glyphs are the building blocks of typography.
Grapheme
Very similar to glyph, but possibly a bit broader. A grapheme is a fundamental unit of language, such as a Chinese pictogram, an exclamation mark or a letterform. Still with us in our guide to what is typography? Great! Because we've got more terms coming your way!
Gutter
The spaces between facing pages of, and very often columns of text.
Justified
In a paragraph of justified text, when the contents are arranged so that there is no white space at the end of a line: each begins flush left and finishes flush right.
Kerning
Designers adjust – or 'kern' – letterforms to improve their readability
The art of adjusting the proximity of adjacent letters to optimise their visual appeal and readability.
Leading
Leading describes the vertical space between each line of type
Leading describes the vertical space between each line of type. In olden times actual strips of lead were used to separate lines of text vertically; the naming convention persists.
Legibility
The ease with which one letterform can be distinguished from the next. It feeds into but is not the same as readability.
Loop
The lower part of the letters 'g' and 'y' are known as the loop or lobe
The lower part of the letter 'g' is known as its loop or lobe. Sometimes called the tail – a term that also takes in the lower portion of letter 'y'.
Logotype
The lettered part of any marque or identity. The logotype can be taken separately from its graphic companion.
Ligature
The conjoined but non-identical twins of the typographic universe. Ligatures pull two forms together to produce a new glyph.
Next page: Glossary of typography M-Z
Manicule
Also known as the bishop's fist (stop sniggering at the back), the pointing hand symbol is a popular dingbat.
Monospace
The characters in the monospaced font are all the same width
Fonts in which every letterform occupies the same horizontal space.
OpenType
Designed by Microsoft and Adobe, OpenType supplanted and improved upon TrueType and PostScript fonts.
Oblique or sloped roman
To be distinguished from italics, in which the letterforms are purposefully drawn to be different to their upright cousins. Oblique letters are merely slanted versions of the standard roman form, often arrived at by mechanical means.
Orphan
The first line of a new paragraph stranded at the bottom of a page. This is considered to be as bad as the name suggests.
Pica
One sixth of an inch in length, the pica is associated with line-length and column width. There are 12 points or 16 pixels in one pica.
Pilcrow
The paragraph symbol, it now marks the presence of a carriage return but at one time is thought to have denoted a change of theme in flowing text.
Point
A standard typographical measurement equal to 1/12 of a pica or 1/72 of an inch.
Readability
Readability refers to the ease with which a block of text can be scanned by eye.
Serif
A flare or terminating flourish at the end of a letterform's strokes believed to originate with the Roman tendency to paint letters onto marble before chiselling them out.
Sidebearing
The horizontal space to either side of a letterform, separating it from other letters.
Spine
The main curved stroke of a lowercase or capital S.
Squoosh
Squoosh is the process of squashing or expanding a typeface digitally
This is the inadvisable process of squashing or expanding a typeface digitally either to fit a space or for visual effect. If you do it, make sure you keep it to yourself.
Spur
A small projection from the curve of a letterform, sometimes known as a beak or a beard. G provides a good example.
Stem
A vertical, full-length stroke in upright characters.
TDC
The Type Directors Club is a typography organisation based in New York.
Tittle
Tittle is the name for the dot above the i or j
The brilliantly suggestive name for the dot above letters 'i' and 'j'.
Terminal
A type of curve at the end of a stroke. Examples include the teardrop shapes in: 'finial', 'ball', 'beak' and 'lachrymal'.
x-height
The height of the lowercase x in any given typeface. This delimits the size of the glyph's detail and therefore also of its ascenders and descenders.
This is a revised and updated version of an article published previously on Creative Bloq.
Starting next month, Adobe is raising the price of its Creative Cloud suite in countries including the UK, Brazil, and Sweden to reflect changes in foreign exchange rates. That’s bad news for photographers, videographers and artists – particularly amateurs who might struggle to justify the extra expense.
Thankfully for cash-strapped creatives, there are some brilliant free alternatives to Creative Cloud’s key apps – some so similar to their Adobe counterparts there’s virtually no learning curve.
These free programs can’t replace premium software for professional creatives, but for hobbyists they’re ideal. Use them together with a cloud storage service like DropBox or OneDrive, and you’ll have access to your creations wherever and wherever you need it.
What are your favorite creative apps? What alternatives would you suggest for the other tools in Adobe CC? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
The best free InDesign alternative: Scribus
Create great-looking, print-ready posters, newsletters and magazines
If you’ve ever used Adobe InDesign, you’ll have no trouble at all with Scribus; the two programs are extremely similar, using a system of grids, frames and layers to create great-looking PDFs. The two programs’ interfaces and workflows are almost identical (members of the TechRadar team with a background in print media can attest to this), and Scribus has all the tools you need to get your documents ready for professional printing, including font management and color profiles.
Scribus comes with a small selection of templates designed for single-page or folded documents (including business cards, brochures and newsletters) and more are available to download free. These are mostly for single-page documents; for multi-page newletters and magazines, it’s better to create your own layouts and save them as master pages.
Our only real complaint is that pagination – despite being very important for publishing – is tucked away in the document settings rather than the Arrange Pages dialog, where it is in InDesign. That aside, Scribus is a top-notch replacement for InDesign.
Download it here: Scribus
The best free Photoshop alternative: GIMP
Refine your photos or create your own artwork from scratch, with support for Photoshop plugins
GIMP is a totally free, open source photo editor that’s as close to Photoshop as you can get without a credit card. It’s in constant development, with frequent updates to add new features and squish bugs (take a look at the release notes for more details), and despite its power, it’s surprisingly easy to use – especially if you’re used to Adobe’s system of menus and toolbars. There are drawing tools, layers, filters and a host of plugins that give you granular control over your images. It even supports Photoshop extensions.
GIMP’s main drawback as a Photoshop substitute is portability; there’s no mobile version, and although there’s a portable app, it’s too large to fit on an ordinary USB stick (and that’s before you’ve started installing extra plugins and fonts).
If you’d prefer a photo editor that you can use anywhere, try Pixlr Editor. It’s not quite as flexible as GIMP, with no support for third-party extensions, but it’s otherwise very similar.
A digital darkroom for converting, editing and managing photos in batches or individually
Free, convenient and powerful, LightZone is the best free alternative to Adobe Lightroom. It provides layer-based, non-destructive editing so you can arrange and readjust filters as you see fit, and save the resulting stack for re-use. There’s vector-based selective editing for refining localized areas, plus a clone brush and spot-healing tool for correcting blemishes, re-lighting, and full manual color adjustment. Best of all, LightZone can process RAW images, including those from Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Panasonic, and Olympus cameras.
You need to sign up for an account before you can download LightZone (its developers want to monitor the number of downloads to see how the project is doing), but the process only takes a minute.
A versatile open source vector editor that's ideal for hobbyist illustrators and web designers
Inkscape is another free tool that does a great job of emulating its Adobe equivalent. Its toolkit makes creating and editing scalable vector graphics (SVG) files a breeze, with advanced manipulation options and a great assortment of filters – both functional and artistic.
Inkscape’s drawing tools are easy to get to grips with and fully customizable. New additions this year include extra path effects, mesh gradients, and interactive smoothing of pencil lines to help you create more realistic drawings.
Some users find Inkscape a little slow, but in all other respects it’s a fine substitute for Illustrator.
Professional-quality stock photos in the public domain – totally free to download and use
Stock is a relatively new addition to Adobe’s CC suite, providing subscribers with a library of high-quality images and other assets for use in design projects. For creatives on a budget, Unsplash is an excellent substitute. This collection of high-quality stock images is free in every sense of the word; each photo has been released into the public domain, so you can use it in any way you like – for profit or not – without worrying about copyright infringement.
Pixabay is another good source of public domain images (including illustrations, which Unsplash doesn’t offer), but the quality isn’t as consistent.
