Design & Effects Glossary

Terms designers, video editors and digital artists use every day, gathered from print shops, darkrooms, painting and old computer screens. Each entry explains what the thing is, where it came from and why it looks the way it does.

Plenty of these looks began as a limit of old hardware or a lucky accident, and knowing the reason makes them easier to use well. Every entry ends with the tools here that make it, so you can try it on a picture of your own.

• Aliasing

  Aliasing is the jagged edges, moiré and backward wheels you get when an image samples detail too coarsely. The math behind it and how anti-aliasing fixes it.

• Anaglyph

  An anaglyph is a 3D picture made of two colored views, one per eye, seen through red-cyan glasses. Its history from silent film to Mars, and why colors shimmer.

• Analogous Colors

  Analogous colors are hues that sit side by side on the color wheel, like orange, coral and gold. Why they feel calm, and why they still need a light and a dark.

• Anamorphic Lens

  An anamorphic lens squeezes a wide view onto a narrower frame, then gets stretched back. It explains widescreen cinema, oval bokeh and long blue flare streaks.

• Aspect Ratio

  Aspect ratio is the width of an image or screen divided by its height, like 16:9 or 4:3. Where the common ratios came from, and why 16:9 is a compromise.

• Ben-Day Dots

  Ben-Day dots are even, same-size dots that print a flat tint. Who Benjamin Day was, how comics built a few dozen colors, and how they differ from halftone.

• Caustics

  Caustics are the bright curves and nets light draws after a curved surface bends or reflects it, from a pool floor to a coffee cup and even the rainbow itself.

• Chiaroscuro

  Chiaroscuro is strong light and dark used to model form, from Leonardo and Caravaggio to film noir. Why your brain reads depth from it, and how to light for it.

• Color Banding

  Color banding is a smooth gradient breaking into stripes. Why 8-bit color runs out of steps, why your eye sharpens the edges, and how a little noise hides it.

• Color Grading

  Color grading is the stage where a film or photo gets its final look. How it grew out of printer lights in the film lab, and what lift, gamma and gain do.

• Crosshatching

  Crosshatching is shading drawn with sets of crossing lines that darken as they pile up. Why two layers aren't twice as dark, and where to spot it in the wild.

• Cyberpunk Aesthetic

  The cyberpunk aesthetic is neon on wet streets, crowded signs, green code and worn high tech. Its roots from Blade Runner to The Matrix, and how to make it.

• Depth of Field

  Depth of field is the range of distances that look sharp in a photo. Learn what controls it, why the one-third rule fails and how phones fake shallow focus.

• Dithering

  Dithering scatters a few colors in a fine pattern so they pass for many. Where the word comes from, how error diffusion works, and where you still see it today.

• Frutiger Aero

  Frutiger Aero is the glossy, bubbly look of mid-2000s tech: water, green fields, glass buttons and aurora wallpaper. Where the name came from and why it ended.

• Gaussian Blur

  Gaussian blur averages each pixel with its neighbors, weighted by a bell curve. Learn why it's every editor's default blur and why CSS measures it in sigma.

• Glassmorphism

  Glassmorphism is the UI style of see-through, blurred panels over color, named in 2020. It traces back to Windows Vista, and it lives or dies on text contrast.

• Glitch Art

  Glitch art turns digital errors into images: corrupted files, broken video codecs and sorted pixels. Where it came from, how each kind is made, how to spot it.

• God Rays

  God rays are shafts of sunlight made visible by haze, through gaps in clouds or trees. They seem to fan out, yet the beams run parallel; perspective does it.

• Halation

  Halation is the red-orange glow film puts around bright lights when light bounces back through the emulsion. Learn why it's red and how film stocks prevent it.

• Halftone

  Halftone prints gray with dots of one ink that grow and shrink with the tone. How photos first reached newspapers, and why the screen is turned to 45 degrees.

• Impasto

  Impasto is paint laid on so thick that brush and knife marks stand up from the canvas. Who used it, why it changes with the light, and why it's so slow to dry.

• Moiré Pattern

  A moiré pattern is the wavy interference where two fine grids overlap. Where the word comes from, how big the fringes get, and why striped shirts crawl on TV.

• Monochrome

  Monochrome means one color: a single hue in many lights and darks, of which black and white is just one case. From Rodchenko's red canvas to a blue cyanotype.

• Noise Texture

  A noise texture is an image of random values used as grain, a texture map or a dither. Whether you pick white, blue or smooth noise changes what it does.

• Op Art

  Op art is 1960s abstract painting made of stripes, checks and circles that seem to pulse or bulge. Where the name came from, and why your eyes see motion there.

• Perlin Noise

  Perlin noise is the smooth random pattern behind CG clouds, fire and terrain. Ken Perlin made it after working on Tron, and it earned him a technical Oscar.

• Pointillism

  Pointillism is painting with dots of pure color that blend in the eye. What Seurat called it, why optical mixing adds no brightness, and how screens use it.

• Pop Art

  Pop art is the 1950s and 60s movement built on ads, comics and celebrity. How it began in London, why it looks printed, and who belongs besides Warhol.

• Posterization

  Posterization is the flattening of smooth tones into a few hard-edged bands of color. Why the eye exaggerates every step, and how few colors a poster needs.

• Psychedelic Art

  Psychedelic art is the swirling, color-clashing style of 1960s rock posters and light shows. How the posters made colors vibrate, and how light shows worked.

• Risograph

  A Risograph is a Japanese stencil printer that prints one spot ink per drum. How its master is burned, why fluorescent pink outshines a screen, and its revival.

• Rule of Thirds

  Rule of thirds: place the subject on lines a third of the way into the frame. Who named it in 1797, what he really meant, how it differs from the golden ratio.

• Saturation

  Saturation is how strong a color looks next to its own brightness, from vivid red down to gray. How it differs from chroma, and why boosting it clips.

• Sepia

  Sepia is the warm red-brown of cuttlefish ink and of toned old photographs. Where the color came from, and why many brown old photos were never sepia toned.

• Solarization

  Solarization flips part of a photo's tones so it looks half positive, half negative. It began as a darkroom accident, and its name comes from shooting the sun.

• Split Complementary Colors

  Split complementary colors pair one hue with the two neighbors of its opposite on the color wheel. The rule keeps a complement's punch with far less tension.

• Stippling

  Stippling is drawing tone out of thousands of small dots. How engravers and science illustrators used it, where hedcuts came from, and how computers place dots.

• Synthwave

  Synthwave is the 2000s revival of 1980s synth music and its art: chrome type, neon grids and a striped sun at dusk. Where the look came from and how to make it.

• Teal and Orange

  Teal and orange is the blockbuster grade that sets warm skin against cool blue-green shadows. Why it centers on skin tones, and how to keep it subtle.

• Tessellation

  Tessellation is a pattern of shapes that covers a surface with no gaps or overlaps. Which shapes can do it, the 2023 tile that never repeats, and Escher's way.

• Triadic Colors

  Triadic colors are three hues spaced evenly around the color wheel, like red, yellow and blue. Why a triad depends on the wheel, and how to calm three hues.

• Vaporwave

  Vaporwave is the 2010s internet music and art style of slowed mall music, Windows 95, Greek busts and pink-teal gradients. What each of its symbols is saying.

• Y2K Aesthetic

  The Y2K aesthetic is the glossy chrome and see-through plastic style of 1997 to 2004, when the future looked liquid and silver. Its roots and how to spot it.