We call it visual hierarchy, but it represents a series of layout decisions that dictate how every element and navigating experience should be. All users have indeed seen, once or multiple times, a website that has too much information and is very hard to navigate.
So, to ensure a simple and easy-to-understand navigation, companies and design teams must create a visual hierarchy for their websites. In this article, you will learn various basic balance principles of design, and how should they be implemented in order to have a well-organized website.
The visual hierarchy represents the approach of organizing the website elements according to their importance. Using visual hierarchy, designers ensure that users will read all the content and see the elements in a certain order to quickly understand how the brand operates and what products or services it offers.
According to various sources, visitors spend about 8 seconds on any design, so the visual hierarchy represents an important approach to maintaining user engagement.
Indeed, the white space, along with the color palette and typography chosen, has a high contribution to the navigation experience, but the element’s placement is probably more essential because it makes the entire design attractive.
Visual hierarchy plays an important role as one of the four important principles of design, besides space, contrast, and scale. When combined, these design principles can create an organized design using images, font, and layout in order to guide the visitors towards important elements.
You should know that when integrated into a Ui/UX design, the visual hierarchy can:
- Maintain the user's attention and convince them to read and navigate the website’s content.
- Easily guide the user’s journey to understand the most important information. Based on the visual hierarchy, users will become more interested in a certain product or service and will eventually make the purchasing decision.
- Create an easy-to-read layout where the important elements are highlighted to help visitors quickly understand the website’s purpose.
Some principles of design balance help UI/UX designers create a project that is able to keep users engaged and at the same time informed.
1. Typography
To maintain an organized visual hierarchy, designers choose to implement different types of fonts to highlight certain content. So, the more important information should be integrated with larger and eventually bolder text in order to make sure that website visitors will see it immediately.
For a well-designed visual hierarchy, the headline must be the largest text with significantly smaller font sizes for the subheadings, and so on.
2. White space
This also represents an important element, because it is able to avoid an overwhelming layout. The negative space helps users read easily all the information without being distracted by other design elements.
3. Size
It represents the dimension of a design element, which is a crucial factor for a website’s accessibility. The size is usually able to communicate the value of certain information. Larger elements indeed draw more attention, so if you need to communicate a certain message, make sure that it can be easily observed and understood when scrolling through the website.
4. Reading patterns
Designers can choose from two main reading patterns: the Z and F patterns. These two follow the natural habits of reading, usually from left to right.
In the Z patterns, users pay attention first to the top left corner, then to the top right, and finally to the bottom left and right, shaping the letter Z. So for this approach, each corner must have an important element or content.
The F pattern works very well for those websites that feature a lot of content because users will read from left to right and repeat the same process. It’s true that this F pattern is a little bit more crowded, but it represents the best choice for news websites or blogs that have a lot content every day.
5. Color
Colors need to be organized in terms of saturation, lightness, and other factors. It’s important to know that colors play an important role because users can understand elements more easily if they are created in certain colors. Designers can choose to use a pre-made color palette with colors that combine well to make sure that the design is visually appealing and has a good contrast in elements.
All these principles of design balance, along with recommendations and tips, should help you create organized visual hierarchies in your next projects. It’s crucial to think about what users will like to see first when interacting with your design, and what elements must stand out to communicate effectively the brand’s message.
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