Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
ing some simple questions: What are the distinguishable parts of the information to be
designed? What should be the main focus of the reader's attention? How do the parts
that are not the main focus relate to each other? Does the viewer need to see a certain
grouping of words before they begin to focus on the main part? The answers to these
questions are often common sense. On a publication's cover, for example, the masthead
or title is most important, so it makes sense that it should be the first type the viewer
sees. In a table of financial information, the viewer needs to understand the context of
figures being presented, so the headers, which describe the meaning of the figures, need
to be located easily. Within a publication's pages, where running text may interact with
captions, callouts, and other details, the running text needs to occupy a consistent area
and be visually noted as different from these other elements. The effect of these de-
cisions becomes simultaneously verbal and visual. All text looks equally important in
raw form. If placed within a format as is, the words form a uniform field of texture. By
manipulating the spaces around and between text, the designer's first option is to create
levels of importance through spatial distinction. The designer might group the majority
of elements together, for example, but separate a specific element—maybe a title—and
give it more space. The uniformity that is usually desirable to keep the reader moving is
thereby purposely broken, creating a fixation point that will be interpreted as deserving
attention and, therefore, more important than the other elements. Enhancing such spa-
tial separations by changing the typographic color of separated elements will further
distinguish each from the other. Similar to the way that viewers rely on visual compar-
isons of form to help identify their meaning, so too do they make assumptions about the
roles of informational components because of their appearance. More than simply es-
tablishing a level of importance, creating hierarchy also means clarifying the function of
informational components through their formal relationships: whether they are grouped
together or separated; whether they appear in a consistent location; and how they are
treated with regard to type-face, size, spacing, and so on. Blocks of information that are
treated similarly will be assumed to mean similar things, or be closely related in func-
tion—captions in this topic, for instance, are assumed to function differently (or carry
a different kind of content) than the running text because of a difference in treatment.
The captions are no less important than the running text, but both play important roles,
which the viewer learns by seeing how they behave in the page layouts and associating
this behavior with each of their roles. The designer, in effect, must visually categorize
each kind of information for the viewer to identify and, most importantly, learn how to
associate each identified kind of information with every other.
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