So you’ve finished your Branding Map process with Orbit Design and you’re now ready to extend your brand and update your marketing materials. Usually this means working with Orbit’s Design Studio which can lead to unfamiliar territory when dealing with designers. Some of the jargon, or design speak, they use when discussing a project can leave you feeling a little confused. We’ll always answer any questions you have about your project, but just in case we confuse you a little, here are the most commonly used terms you will hear from our design team.
Comps, Proofs and Mock-ups
Often when the designers send you the initial artwork for you to review they will refer to it as a proof or comp. Comp is short for “comprehensive layout” which is a fancy way of saying “pretty close to final.” The word proof is more often used when working on a print project and is “proof” or “evidence” of how the project will look when printed. Similarly in the web world, often the first visual representation of your website will be called mock-ups. Mock-ups are used by designers to acquire feedback from early in the design process – when changes can easily be made.
Lorem Ipsum
One of the most frequent questions we get as designers is, “what is this crazy text” that’s in my mock-up or comp? It’s called greeking, or Lorem Ipsum. When the designers send a comp – the main purpose is to look at the overall layout, colors, graphics, etc. and to not get distracted by the readable content of a page. Using Lorem Ipsum is beneficial because it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to having ‘Content here, content here’ repeated 100 times.
RGB vs. CMYK vs. Pantone
When dealing with designers you will invariably get into a discussion about color. It is important to understand that there are 3 different color models in design and each has a specific purpose.
RGB (red, green, blue) is the color you see on any digital device – computers, TV’s, tablets, etc. Often these colors are brighter, and some values of RGB cannot be reproduced in printing. One important thing to keep in mind is that every device will display color a bit differently – so your logo will look different on your iPhone vs. your client’s monitor vs. your home laptop.
When dealing with printing your projects, you will be dealing with CMYK colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). These are the four colors of inks used in various percentages to create millions of perceived colors. Similarly to viewing your logo on screen, each printing device will print your project slightly different – so what you see on your office printer might be different than what comes off of a $100,000 printer.
Finally – there are Pantone Colors (Pantone Matching System or PMS) where inks are made into specific colors which are then printed in a color-matching swatch book. These specially formulated inks ensure a perfect and consistent color match from one printer to the next.
So there you have it – a few key terms to help you better communicate with the designers.