Robyn Davie
- Jul 16, 2020
- 2 min read

Six Common Design Terms Explained

Updated: Aug 4, 2020

If you are starting a new brand or looking to refresh an old one, approaching a designer or agency can be a bit over whelming. Especially when they start throwing every design word they can think of at you.

Here are some six of the most common design terms explained:

1. Mood board/Inspiration board: A mood board is an arrangement of images, materials, pieces of text, etc intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept. Its basically the feeling you want your brand to convey. 2. Brand Identity: A brand identity is all the visible elements like colours, logos, designs and shapes that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers' minds. Its what helps consumers distinguish your brand from a competitor. 3. Rebrand: A rebrand is when you change the corporate image of a company or organisation. Rebranding can include freshening up the logo, abbreviating a brand name (eg: KFC), using more corporate colours or even revamping and existing website. 4. Collateral: Collateral are all the elements that will be designed after the brand identity has been established, Like websites, email signatures, letterheads or social media.

5. Colour Palette: A colour palette is an arrangement of colours that are suitable to your brand or preference. Colour palettes are used to keep a brand looking consistent throughout all the online and printed collateral. 6. Deep-etching: Deep-etching: “is a graphic design term used to describe the process of removing a specific section of a photograph or image from its background so that it stands alone. This means that you can use just that part in a different way or on a different background,” says Turbofuture.

Need design work? Stuck with some random design terminology?

Give us a shout, we promise not to throw every design term and the kitchen sink your way. Better yet let’s have a coffee zoom date. Contact us at hello@robyndavie.com