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Category: Graphic Design

26 Feb
2021

The importance of text hierarchy

by Keely | in Graphic Design, Marketing, Uncategorised | on 26 Feb 2021

Typographic hierarchy is a system for organising text, which allows the reader to immediately understand the order of importance of what’s to be read. This is important in any design, as the easier the piece is to read visually, the more likely it is to be read and to keep your audience engaged.

The text hierarchy system applies to near enough everything, from print assets – letterheads, business cards and flyers, to web design – where navigation and call to actions need to be as clear as possible for the best user experience.

3 steps to consider going about this

  1. To begin with, it’s essential to recognise what message the text is trying to convey. The branding and aesthetics will come after, but to start with it’s important to find the purpose and meaning.
  2. Content should be treated as a visual component – along with shapes, icons, colour, typography etc. If colour is used to differentiate rank, think about the psychology and the meaning of that colour – red for example portrays danger or caution, and similarly in terms of type, text that’s in bold all caps can sometimes give off that same message.
  3. Put yourself in the reader’s position and try to see things how they would at first glance. Are each of the sections clear and contrasting enough to show a hierarchy of importance? The article page from one of our newsletter designs below displays the 3 main levels:

Heading

The heading or title is the first thing the reader sees when glancing through content. This is of the highest importance as if it’s not engaging enough or not visually striking, the reader may flick past and never even get to the main content.

Subheading

Next down the hierarchy are the Subheadings, and these are used to separate the text into sections. This text should be less eyecatching than the header, but more visual than the text body, as this is a summary of the main content within it.

Body

Finally we come to the body text, this section is more content heavy and includes all the meaty information, so it’s crucial that it’s easy to read to ensure the reader continues all the way through to the end.

 

With and without a designed hierarchy

We love comedy here at PDC, myself in particular loves going to see stand-up comedians – although a bit difficult in these times! Using this sector as an example, I wanted to show how the way a listings page is displayed can impact the readability.

Eye-tracking research by the Missouri University of Science and Technology shows that when looking at a website, it takes users less than two-tenths of a second to form a first impression, spending around 2.6 seconds scanning a website before focusing on a specific area. This doesn’t surprise me at all, as personally if I don’t see what I want to see straight away I just won’t bother to look.

Imagine trying to find someone specific if this were a list of hundreds of comedians:

It’s a little extreme, but as you can see, without any system of hierarchy it’s actually quite painful to sift through the text to find what you’re looking for.

However as you can see below, by using colour and varying type size and weights, it’s easier to isolate certain sections to make it much more readable and scannable:

And to make it even clearer than that as well as being a bit more visual, the use of icons can also help:

Overall, there are many styling techniques that can be used to create a textual hierarchy; size, weight, colour, position, type contrast, and a lot of the time these techniques are used in combination with each other.

Understand the purpose of the text and what message it is trying to get across, decipher what is the most important content, and then present this content in the most organised way. Remove the clutter and design a clear and readable piece for your audience – less is more!

 

 

18 Sep
2020

6 Benefits of Using Images, Flat Graphics and Infographics on Your Website and Social Media

by Keely | in Graphic Design, Marketing, Social Media | on 18 Sep 2020
  1. Why are images and graphics so important on websites, blogs and social media? One of the main reasons is readability.There’s nothing worse than landing on a page and there just being pages and pages of text, it puts people off as it’s too overwhelming to look at. However, adding visual assets to these types of pages allows it to be broken up into sections, making it so much easier for the reader to digest the information.

 

  1. An image can tell a thousand words. Sometimes an image can tell you about the information much quicker than reading a headline, as well as being much more interesting to look at. So, incorporating some of the text-heavy content into an infographic, is much more aesthetically pleasing for the reader, meaning they are more likely to read it and absorb what’s being said.

 

  1. Images can rank in Google search engines, as long as the images are significant, optimised and not a highly popular subject that’s being written about.
    A good example of this, is if you sell niche products on your website where there’s not much competition on the market, you should use the specific model/product name as a keyword, and this could become a good source of traffic.

 

  1. Stand out on social media. Everyone knows that images play a massive role on social platforms, not everyone searches for images on Google, but on social media you see things without even looking for them. When you come across a topic you’re interested in, or just a funny image you are likely to click on it, so depending on your topic, this can help you to get more views on your post content.

 

  1. Following on from the step above, these images that stand out to the reader are more likely to be shared, and therefore your content is spread out to be seen by a wider audience. Obviously presuming that the content is of value and is a topic people have interest in.

 

  1. Visual branding becomes your signature, this helps people to identify you easily, when they are used to seeing the same colours, graphics and styles repeated throughout your posts and content. As previously mentioned, an image sometimes does a better job of explaining something, so using things like character graphics is a good way to amplify your brand and make it much more visual and memorable.

  

 

With stock photos and free images sites (pexels.com, unsplash.com) now so available to us, creating blogs etc has never been easier.

The downside to this, is that because they are so freely available and easy to access, it means that a lot of people can be using the same images across their platforms – a bit like shopping at a high street store and then seeing everyone wearing the new top you just bought, it’s annoying!

 

This is why it’s important to be original and stand out amongst the rest. Using a mixture of imagery and graphics is a good option, as if you don’t have access to original photos like a lot of people don’t, you can bring out your identity and originality in graphics and infographics. Here at PDC, we can work with you to create your own brand and individuality that’s suited to your style of work. Contact us today to see how we can help you.