To design a page that’s easy to understand, you have to discriminate.
That’s right: I’m advocating information discrimination. Deciding on a hierarchy for your information – from most important to least important – will help you decide how to place things, how large, bold or colorful they should be, and where you should put them on your screen or page.
Imagine this scenario
Let’s say you have a big sale coming up on blue widgets. The new “in” color is orange, and you need to move the blue ones out of your warehouse to make room for new merchandise. Time to mark them down, and publicize the sale.
These are top-quality widgets and you’ve never before offered them at such a low price, so you decide to emphasize the low price in your ad.
You also need to tell people the sale ends next Monday, supplies are limited, first-come first-served, your address, phone, and web site. For those who aren’t familiar with your product you should probably include a short description of it. Oh yes, and it must fit in a quarter page newspaper ad.
The usual approach
The usual approach to designing this ad is above. Have you seen an ad like this in your local newspaper? I know I have! This is what most of them look like. Readers tend to look away and move on to something more engaging.
Why is it bad? Let us count the ways:
- Too much text in all capital letters and uneven word spacing makes it hard to read
- What is it selling? It looks like it’s selling a sale (not a product)
- The ad is so crowded, there’s no room for the phone number
The better approach: Create hierarchy
To create an effective and inviting ad, use information discrimination, and create a hierarchy of importance:
- Most important information: Price
- Next most important information: Description; sale ends Monday; where to buy
- Least important information: Limited quantities; first-come, first-served
The next step is to design your visual presentation to represent this hierarchy.
Here’s a second approach to this ad. There’s a clear hierarchy to the way the information is presented. The design uses plenty of white space (read more about white space here). White space makes the ad more inviting, especially on a crowded newspaper page.
This approach can be used for web pages, advertising and any print material (not just ads). Before you put text or images on a page, use information discrimination to design a hierarchy of importance. Once you do this, you’ll know how to present things visually so that your design informs, motivates and sells.
Design 101
This is the eighth in a series of ten lessons called “Design 101.”
The next lesson will cover photography and illustration, and give you some tips for choosing, using and making the most of both.
