The 4 best ways to create hierarchy in design by Monica Galvan

hierarchy in design

Use this design principle to make the key elements of your projects pop. By understanding how to effectively place images and text within the context of your visual design, you are adding structural integrity. And whether they realize it or not, structural integrity helps give your audience greater confidence in what you are promoting.

Principles of Design

Now, we’ll see how hierarchy with visually engaging content differs. Unlike the magazine cover which revolves around a single main point of focus, the newspaper will want to shout about multiple headlines at once. Hierarchy typically establishes itself on newspaper covers through contrast in scale. On newspaper covers, the most prominent article will exert the most space on the page and less prominent articles will sit next to or around it.

Content format

Sizes need to be used in moderation, in relation to one another. And also tastefully so that they do not take away the visual appeal of a design. Elements that appear too big can overshadow the rest of the design. And elements that are too small will be lost to the reader completely. Free Faces, designed by Simon Foster, employs high-contrast colors — an off-white for the text against an almost-black background — to make every typeface pop.

Hierarchy in Design Principle #1: Size

Absolutely – establishing leaderboards and visitor metrics around engagement split by platform rarely suffices to inspire holistic evaluation of approaches. An upgraded mindset recognises that while device-specific detailing shows user comprehension varying, effective hierarchy must transcend such fragmentation. Communication goals matter more than platform-specific creative expression.

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But the red of her dress and the yellow leaves draw attention. Here’s a layout that features a bunch of visual elements on the right, but one of them is just a bit larger than the others. Most viewers will look at the more prominent feature first as it immediately draws the eye in. Leading lines can help your audience see the design in the way you intend. A leading line doesn’t have to be an actual line, rather anything that creates a sense of movement. As the phrase suggests, leading lines are elements that in some way naturally lead the eye in an overall direction across the page or screen.

Well, my name is Mike Ploger here with Visme and I’m here to show you how to take your image to the next level using 11 Visual Hierarchy in Design Principles. We're a creative branding agency dedicated to helping businesses like yours build and grow strong, memorable brands. Let’s talk about your logo, branding or web development project today!

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Juno’s background image — an upside-down photo of a woman bending over with her head between her legs — follows the rule of thirds. Free Faces uses repetition to group its offerings in a balanced three-item layout, allowing each typeface enough space to showcase its distinct characteristics. And presenting each font in the same size gives visitors the freedom to choose their preference, indicating that no typeface is more significant than the other. Placing web elements near each other or using patterns to organize them helps visitors understand how they’re related and what their purpose is. If your website has a blog, organizing posts side by side or on top of each other shows visitors they serve the same purpose. So, if you repeat a series of design elements, viewers will assume they are similar to each other.

Draw attention with size and scale

In order for you to arrive at the best visual solution, you need to explore several options. Maybe one version uses color differently, another could shift the order and scale of elements, maybe another focuses on changing the messaging. There are so many ways you can organize the content of a website, be sure to consider all possible solutions before narrowing down to present to the client.

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hierarchy in design

Whether you’re an amateur designer or a seasoned veteran you can always use a refresher when it comes to visual layouts and placing elements in the design – perhaps a call to action. Are you maximizing negative space—a question you might not have thought to ask. Are you taking into account what you want the audience to notice first?

Color is one of the main attractions and visual elements of your design, be it for a landing page or brochure. Therefore, it’s sitting pretty high up in the hierarchy of visual elements. Just splattering bright colors all over the page to grab attention may be a bit discordant. As you’re reading this text, the sentences are aligned left. This helps with focus and arranges visual flow according to the Z and F patterns that we previously talked about. In design, it’s best that you try to align your elements in a certain way, rather than have them chaotically placed all over the visual.

Your most dominant heading (heading level 1) should be reserved for the title of the page. Just as every book only has one front cover, a page or interface should only have one main heading. The following are some practical design instances where hierarchy plays a role. The flow of hierarchy here starts from the perceived front and moves towards the back into the distance. Here we have some stroke lines going from thick to thin, from top to bottom in eight steps.

With the F pattern, users begin by scanning left to right along the top, but then scan down the left side of the page, looking for visual clues to the information they seek. When they find such a clue, they scan from left to right. They repeat this process until they reach the end of the page. Reports from Copenhagen confirm that more designers, especially web designers, are appreciating the need to engage users more directly. Reaching back into their art school days while working a little psychology into the mix seems to do the trick. Content in any digital page layout will follow a specific hierarchy.

A staggering 70% of these e-commerce giants failed the test. As humans we’ve been accustomed to consuming layouts (such as books) from top to bottom, and in the west more specifically, it’s top-left to bottom. By using scale appropriately, you can control how people view your composition and ensure that they absorb your message correctly.

Placing items at one, some, or all of these points creates visual interest without disrupting balance — the points aren’t centered, but they’re also not entirely off to the side. If you want the reader to focus on one thing in particular, blur the rest out. Designers use blurred backgrounds to enhance the atmosphere of an image and help the viewer understand what they’re seeing. You can recede certain elements using blurring to indicate that it’s a visual cue that’s not as important. This example of white space doesn’t even use “white” space – it’s grey – but the effect of the blank space around the design is pretty powerful.

This level of contrast with color pushes the headline to a higher level of importance than the body copy which is in a pastel green and blends more into the background. The large size and stark contrast of the lime green text on the vibrant purple background help us see the headline as the most important element first. We immediately read and understand this company solves eCommerce problems. Next, we notice the beautiful illustration of a team working on their commuters, reinforcing the idea that there is a team of professionals behind the eCommerce problem-solving company. All combined, this creates typographic hierarchy, helping the reader move through the content in priority order. Generally speaking, user interfaces are either text-heavy or visually engaging.

The visual hierarchy ensures split-second brand recognition and fuels loyalty. Any object in a design carries an amount of weight just like they do in the physical world. The alignment of an element in relation to the other elements in a design can significantly change its visual weight. The elements that are not as important can be scaled to appear smaller so that they get less visibility and emphasis. This will push them to a lower level on the importance scale. This does not mean that the most important things in a layout simply just have to be gigantic.

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