Visual hierarchy is one of the basic design principles that, when followed, will empower your website design immensely in fulfilling your goals of engaging the audience. By understanding it well, you can utilise fully to the advantage of your web presence. This is the reason why a lot of effort has been put into understanding and decoding it as effectively as possible. Here are some of the key ideas you must have about it, in order to begin to understand using it.
The concept of Visual Hierarchy
The very fact that we human beings are visual thinkers, makes visual hierarchy all the more important. Design as they say, is nothing but a form of communication. While this is true of any form of a design, it specially applies to the website design. This implies that over huge blocks of information, we prefer to process visual information in the form of design. And we do not just see objects but we tend to subconsciously arrange what we see in terms of “visual relationships”. It is the way for our brains to comprehend the information. It attempts to group the similar elements together and organise them into meaningful patterns which are easily processed and remembered.
Here are the key factors of visual hierarchy that you need to know about, to effectively utilise visual hierarchy for a compelling web design.
1) Size
We tend to pay attention to objects based on their size and therefore, the bigger objects tend to attract more attention. Size, therefore, is a proven tool for creating visual hierarchy in the design.
2) Colour
Colour does not only help you organise the design objects in a certain way, but it also serves to add character to the design element. Typically, using bold and contrasting colours is a sure-shot way for your website design to draw attention of the audience and create a recall.
3) Fonts
Selection of fonts is also critical to creating visual hierarchy in your desired fashion. Not just the weight and the style of the font chosen is important, but also, the area of your website where you decide to place it, makes a lot of difference.
4) White Space
White space is the space between the objects on the page which may or may not be white in color, and therefore, it is also termed as the negative space. It is critical for aiding visual hierarchy because lack of it can drive away the audience since without it, they would fail to understand the hierarchy created.
Scanning Pattern of the Human Eye
There are set patterns in which the human eyes scan information in certain situations. While some of this may vary to an extent depending upon the individual, most of them follow predictable scanning patterns which are important to understand for making the most of the visual hierarchy.
The F-Pattern & the Z Pattern
For text-heavy web pages such as blogs, the scanning pattern usually followed, is the F pattern, in which first few lines are scanned horizontally, the next few lines are scanned for the keywords of interest, followed by, horizontal reading from the point where the interest is generated. The Z scanning pattern is used on pages that are not text-heavy but more focused on visual content. The Z-pattern comes from the left-to-right reading pattern as well as the presence of the menu bar in this area. The Z-scanning is useful for deciding the visual hierarchy in the layout of your website while addressing the many basic design elements such as the calls-to-action and branding.
By developing a good understanding of the visual patterns and the natural scanning pattern of the eye, can help you make the most of your website design, as, when you already know what your audience is looking for and what will catch their attention in the best way, it is easier to incorporate in your website.
For more specific and elaborate best-practices related to creating visual hierarchy in your upcoming web design Dubai project, contact the website design experts in Carmatec Global. With over 16 years of extensive experience and diverse industry insight, we are capable of imparting expert insight and intelligence in the area of website design.
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