When I took one of the beginner graphic design courses at my school, my professor chose an excellent book for the class. This book proved to be truly helpful in different areas of what we were studying. For a beginner graphic design student it is perfect, for others who are more advanced, it may be just another nice design handbook to have.
A critical guide for designers,
writers, editors and students
by Ellen Lupton
The book is extremely easy to read and understand and it comes jam packed with vivid examples of almost everything that is written within it. (Typography, Posters, Etc..)
From this book I started to learn some of the vocabulary that I was speaking of in my previous post. I will post some here, but I strongly recommend this book, I still own it and it still comes in handy for when I forget the terms and draw blanks (nobody’s perfect 
)
DESIGN VOCABULARY:
x-height: the height of the main body of a lowercase letter excluding the ascenders and descenders; (basically the height of the “x” is the easiest way to determine this since it has no ascenders or descenders)
(Source: Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton)
ascenders: element of a letter that extends higher than the main body of a letter
descenders: element of a letter that extends lower than the main body of a letter
baseline: where all the letters sit, some of the curves of the letters may extend slightly below this but it serves to make the type look stable
(Source: Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton)
cap height: the distance from the baseline to the top of a capital letter, the cap height determines the point size
(Source: Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton)
serif: the little tails that stem out from the main body of a letter
sans serif: a kind of type which has no serifs
counter: an enclosed space within a letter (i.e: o, a, e, p, etc..)
rule: technical name for a line
kerning: the act of moving characters closer or further apart
leading: the act of moving lines of text closer or further apart
That’s all I’ll post in order to encourage you to go out and pick up the book It has a lot of other valuable information in it as well, including a great section on the grid. Hope you find it as useful as I did!
the xtrovert
