- Unlike human beings, all content is not equal.
As designer, it is your job to determine
which parts of the message is most important
and how the viewer should proceed.
When a client gives me copy or content,
he or she will point out the issues
that are important and need to be highlighted.
Unfortunately, this can end up being the headline
and the subhead and the first paragraph.
Oh, and the other copy.
And the captions are important too.
This is all fine.
Except the result when everything is critical
is that nothing stands out.
This is like getting an email
from someone who types in all caps,
because the entire message is important.
Nobody wants to read a page of shouting,
so you don't bother.
As designers we help guide the viewer
through the information.
By providing a sense of hierarchy,
we let the viewer know what should be seen
first, next, and last.
Let's start with the way people access information.
When we first see a page,
whether it's print or screen-based,
we look for the biggest image.
It's human nature.
Next, looking from left to right and top to bottom,
we find the largest words,
then work our way down and across the page,
scanning for smaller and less important content.
Hopefully this leads us to a well-organized layout
that includes different types of information.
Scale is one way to set up a hierarchy.
The largest type is the most important
and as the type gets smaller,
the information is less critical.
On this poster, the name of the photographer, Gordon Parks.
is the most important information.
This also clarified that the content
was not the boxer Muhammad Ali, but the photographs.
The fact it was a retrospective
was the secondary information.
And finally the tertiary information
such as date, time, and address.
Another option when I want to call attention
to the most important piece of information
is to change the color.
Red is a bright color that reads fast,
so this can be a good solution.
Or any color shift, from a darker color
to a brighter color, helps.
If I feel adventurous,
I might make the headline one color,
the subhead a different one,
the text another one, and so on.
But be careful and judicious here.
Too much of this color variation
can be like eating too many French pastries.
It sounds good in theory
but can leave you not feeling particularly good.
Setting up a clear system of priorities on a page
helps the reader identify the hierarchy of the message.
The hardest part of this process
is convincing others that every single
tiny piece of information is not wildly important.