The 5 Primary Principles of Potent Web Design – Part 4 : Hierarchies

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There are 5 primary principles of effective web design. All five concepts are essential to excellence, thus it is rare to see them used individually. Rather each one must be woven through the others like the threads of a fine tapestry.

Because a basic understanding of these concepts is fundamental to the most successful web design, I do not wish to rush through this content. I am crafting this sequence with special care and spreading the lesson over five parts.

This is part 4: Hierarchies

Hierarchies help create organization. A well designed web page should provide visitors with an explicit flow for their eyes to follow. Upon landing on a web page, regardless of design, a visitor’s eyes are immediately drawn to the top left hand corner of the page. Anything positioned against that spot has an emphatic superiority over all those elements below.

Any page elements a web designer wishes to imbue with importance should be placed as close to the top left hand corner as possible.

By grouping similar elements in close proximity, a skilled web designer will be able to create a focal point and easily imply a relationship between relevant information on the page. The visual hierarchy of a web site (almost always) hangs entirely from the top left hand corner, also called the origin. The sequence of importance then flows in a cascade from the origin to the bottom right of the page.

An effective website hierarchy creates a visual organization of a website’s design, allowing the reader to have a clear understanding of where to both start and finish their reading. A clear hierarchy doesn’t necessarily mean similar elements must be grouped together, it simply means they must somehow remain visually connected with one another through the use of repetition (font, color, shape, size, etc.).

The origin is the focal point of the web page, and any element set in that spot will maintain visual domination over the entire page. The origin is the first thing the eye sees and there is no escaping the fact, so for the most effective web design, a designer must place their most significant elements along the cascade as it winds down the page from the top left corner down to the bottom right.

Websites can be confusing. In order to invite order among the chaos, a web designer must be able to effectively create a hierarchy to clearly articulate the design elements of the page.

In part five, our final part of the series, “The 5 Primary Principles of Potent Web Design,” we’ll explore Balance and how it brings organization to a quality web design.