Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Visual Organization

Not directing the audience through a design is misdirecting them.

Eye Movement
  • Typical eye moves left to right and top to bottom.
  • Controlling eye movement within a composition is a matter of directing the natural scanning tendency of the viewer's eye.
  • The eye tends to gravitate towards areas of complexity first. In pictures of people, the eye is always attracted to the face and particularly the eye.
  • Light areas of a composition will attract the eye, especially when adjacent to a dark area.
  • Diagonal lines or edges will guide eye movement.
Optical Center
  • The spot where the human eye tends to enter the page. Optical center is slightly avove the mathematical center (exact) and just to the left.

Z Pattern
  • Our visual pattern makes a sweep of the page, generally in the shape of a "Z."
  • Effective page design maps a viewer's route through information. The designer's objective is to lead the viewer's eye to the important elements or information.
Fonts
  • Use no more than two fonts on a page. Make sure the fonts complement each other.
  • Avoid all uppercase letters.
  • Choose the correct fonts to create a tone or theme.
  • Don't overuse decorative or script fonts.
typography.com/email/2010_03/index.htm

Visual Hierarchy
  • Establishes focal points based on their importance to the message that's being communicated. A crucial part of the design process is to establish an order of elements to help the viewer absorb the information provided by a design.
  • To establish a hierarchy, establish what the viewer should look at in what order.
The Grid
  • A way of organizing content on a page using any combination of margins, guide lines, rows and columns.
  • Instituted by Modernism.
  • Assists the audience by breaking info into manageable chunks and establishing relationships between text and images.
  • Consists of a distinct set of alignment-based relationships that act as guidelines for distributing elements across a format.
  • Every design will require a different grid structure to address the particular elements within the design.
  • The grid is used not only to clarify the message being communicated but to also unify the elements.

No comments:

Post a Comment