ESports Design Glossary
Are you new to the world of eSports design? Wondering what other eSports designers are talking about in those cool abbreviations on Twitter or YouTube? Want to get into eSports teams and gaming clans to become a team designer, but not sure about the glossary, terms, meaning, terminology, jargon, abbreviations or slang other team members are using? Here comes a collection of some frequently used terms in the world of eSports design, be it graphic design, logo design, GFX design or even motion design. The following list will be updated from time to time. Feel free to contact us to add some terms and definitions, and let's help the gaming community together!
AI Illustrator document file extension, a type of vector file format. A proper AI file contains mostly vector-based elements in a separate manner.
avi Short for "avatar". Usually refer to the profile picture on social media, e.g. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Technically anything can be an avi, for example, a symbol, a logo, a text, a badge, or a mascot. But when people are asking others to make an avi for them, they usually refer to some stylized text, symbol or image with additional effects (usually done through Photoshop) like lighting, drop shadows, 3D, lens flare, sparks and smoke with a stylized background. Bear in mind, a logo can be an avi technically, but an avi does not necessary need to be a logo. Still, don't ask designers for a "logo" if you're expecting a stylized image.
bump Commonly used in Twitter. When a designer bumps his designs, he replies to or retweets his own tweets so that his designs in older tweets appear in others' (especially followers') Twitter timeline again. Designers often leave words like "bump!", "ops?", and "ICYMI" when they bump their designs. Sometimes it may look unnatural and attention-seeking if the tweet is bumped too many times.
CC Short for "color correction". Though it literally refers to color correction / color grading, when designers mention "CC / CC's", they usually mean effect presets (e.g. settings for brightness and contrast, curve, level, hue and saturation, highlight, shadow, depth of field...) that produce a certain style of color tone. This term is mostly used by social media designers, motion graphics designers and video editors, and is often related to software like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. Designers will often offer CC packs, which are collections of various color correction effect presets that can be used on images like header designs, or on videos like video edits and collages.
Other less common usage: Adobe Creative Cloud products e.g. Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, After Effects CC; Creative Commons - a type of copyright license.
decking Refers to "Tweet Decking / Tweetdecking". A technique mostly used by less famous designers to gain access to others' Twitter accounts (probably inactive ones) by the teams feature on TweetDeck to like and retweet their own tweets, in order to create the delusion that they or their tweets are popular. Twitter users seek TweetDeck access by asking others for inactive accounts, or claiming to help others grow. If you're seeing a designer receive unnatural amount of retweets and suspecting he is decking his tweets, check out some of the accounts that have retweeted the tweets. If they're more or less retweeting or liking the same stuff, and seldom tweet on their own, the accounts are probably being decked.
dual Collaboration between two designers which usually brings mutual benefits. For example, a sketch artist can have a dual with an illustrator, while a mascot designer can have a dual with a social media designer to create a collaborated design or to hold a giveaway.
DZN Short for "design". Some designers include it in their Twitter username / handle (i.e. their Twitter @) when their preferred usernames have been used already. For example, it can be used in a way like @NobodyDZN.
F/A Short for "Free Agent". Though commonly used by players, the term is often seen used by designers. Being a free agent means they are not currently in any team, organization or studio, and are ready and looking forward to joining one. Being a free agent doesn't necessarily mean they offer their services or designs for free.
GFX Short for "graphics". Examples include "Can you do me some free GFX?" and "We're looking for some GFX designers". GFX is a very general terms which usually refers to social media design like Twitter header and avi, Twitch overlay and stream package, YouTube channel art and thumbnail, which mostly require Photoshop skills. Some designers dislike overgeneralizing all designs related to eSports as "GFX", like website design, logo design, branding and apparel design. However, this term is still overused and both designers and those asking for GFX should clarify what they're meaning by "GFX".
grind Focusing and putting lots of time, efforts and hard work into something. Examples include "Our team is grinding for more logo concepts!", "Currently on a header design grind.", "I needa start grinding for Dare!". Designers use this term often to show determination and imply they are quite busy at the moment.
ICYMI Short for "In Case You Missed It". Often used by designers to bump their designs on Twitter.
ops Short for "opinions". Have nothing to do with exclamation or Call of Duty: Black Ops series. Therefore, when designers post a design and write "ops?", "ops appreciated" or something similar, they're expecting some opinions and feedback.
org Short for "organisation". Original refers to an eSports organisation, a rather professional term. But it has been overused and becomed another seemingly more astounding term for an eSports team.
PNG Short for "Portable Network Graphics", a file format for raster graphics. When somebody asks for a PNG, they're usually expecting the image to be delivered with a transparent background (i.e. with transparency).
port Short for "portfolio". Most commonly used in phrases like "link your port". Common portfolio sites include Behance, Carbonmade, Dribbble, DeviantArt, Portfoliobox, Wix and Weebly. Portfolios are often needed or shared in a team member recruit or port reviews.
PSD Photoshop document file extension. When somebody is asking for a PSD, they're expecting to get access to the Photoshop source file with the highest original quality, usually with all the separate layers, which are not merged.
RC Short for "recruit". The term is usually used by eSports teams or gaming clans when they want to recruit new members. For example, they will hold RC challenges and RC contests, and winners will receive recruitment as players, designers, editors, content creators, etc. Often seen in Twitter hashtags like #RedRC, #SoarRC, and #DareRC.
sig Short for "signature". Most often used by signature or lettering designers. There are different styles of signature designs, including cursive signatures, brush signatures, marker signatures, hand lettering signatures and handwritten signatures,
vector Usually refers to "vector graphics". Mathematically-defined lines and shapes which are scalable to the size of a building without any quality loss. Opposite to "raster graphics" or "pixels". More detailed explanations on vector vs raster can be viewed in vector-conversions.com's article. Most commonly used vector-based software is Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw and Inkscape. File formats include AI, EPS, CDR, PDF, etc. Vector format is important to ensure adaptability and editability, that's why logo design directory like LogoFirms and logodir list or mention clearly what file formats logo design companies offer.
WIP Short for "work-in-progress". Designers often show people their work-in-progress to listen to opinions and improve. Common work-in-progress includes sketches and half-finished designs.
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