å Sunday, November 8th, 2015

The reading on Hierarchy was pretty interesting to me. Hierarchy within design is something that I have been noticing and looking out for fairly frequently and it is, just like many other things, a factor that can make or break a design. It’s what gives a design it’s flow and readability. If someone was to look at a design, they would most likely want to look at something that clearly conveyed what parts of the design are most important and what parts of the design are not as important. For example, think about an event flyer. An event flyer is normally filled with a good amount of text, and that text needs to be broken up somehow or else nobody will even bother reading it. People passing by that flyer want to know what the event is and when it takes place at first glance. If that information draws them in, then they’ll care enough to look further and find the other details. Creating a hierarchy within a design can be pretty difficult, though. You really have to take the time to think and make decisions about what is TRULY the most significant in your case. I, myself, am hoping to better myself at it.

After reading about hierarchy I realized how important the layout of the page or advertisement is for the designer and viewer. Although the consumer may not realize it, the way information is advertised often affects whether they will buy an item or not. Using typographic and photographic information, you can express the product design in a million different ways. Scale, placement and alignment are used to create order and it makes the piece look neat and creative at the same time. Hierarchy determines the impact a message has on a viewer or consumer and this is all manipulated by the designer. Hierarchy is a way the designer can control its’ viewers and manipulate what catches their eye first by using scale and style. This reading was very interesting and opened my eyes to the possibilities hierarchy gives you in a design.

A Few Clouds

47°F

Humidity 49%

Wind Speed NW 13 MPD

Barometer 30.00 in

Dewpoint 29°F

Visibility 10.00 mi

Boise, Idaho

83701

I always knew there had to be an order to doing things in graphic design.  If there was no order, the projects would be a mess and would not look as amazing as most do.  Every little detail is important in making the project better the best it could be. Thought has to go into every project- what size lettering? Should this be tilted?  What colors go best here? What’s the best font to use?  There is a lot of idea that goes into even simple things- like a table of context.  Changing the fonts or editing the landscapes adds character to the page and makes it unique.  I also thought about the dimensional hierarchy and how everything in the picture has to be set up so the eye follows the design in a dimensional form to make a connection with the picture.  If the viewer feels a connection, the designer has done their job well.

After reading through this article it showed how designers have so much authority within the process of their work. For example, how and where to place images/text; if they want to use weights, italic/bold/underlined; just to get a certain message through to their clients and viewer. Each client and viewer has different taste, opinion, and their own vision. The designer’s job is to make all of that compliment each other through their own work. When one thinks of hierarchy they think of a class system society, having the elites being on top and the peasants towards the bottom. Well in design that is also somewhat of the case. Certain words or pictures are going to be emphasized more than others, just like the class system. The client and viewer will be drawn to the larger, bolder, flexible texts rather than the smaller text. The designer holds the power or in American historian would call it holding the big stick!