No not this kind of lay out...
From the margins on the side of a page, to the content in between, layout is, in many ways, the foundation of design. Layout is the structure and relationship between items on a page. It maintains balance, and organization from one page to the next. Intentional placement of content helps users easily scan the page and find what they need. That’s layout in a nutshell.
Bad layout results in creating cognitive overload for users. They can’t easily find what they are looking for, which means they're less efficient at accomplishing their tasks and this causes frustration. Good layout has solid hierarchy and visual relationships. This helps the user to quickly scan and parse content, which is what IA and Gestalt Principles are all about.
At the macro level for digital products, layout is about figuring out the arrangement of images, text, and overall functionality.
Let’s look at it like a recipe. If UI elements such as buttons, text, images, icons, etc. are the recipe ingredients, then layout provides the instructions for where and how you use those ingredients to make the overall recipe look and taste just right. Good layout can be learned. It’s part science and part art. Just like a good recipe.
Robin Patricia Williams created 4 design principles for layout: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity (CRAP).
Contrast is about using visual weight (the measure of how much a visual element attracts the eye of the viewer) to make elements stand out and draw attention. When contrast is applied correctly, it’s not obvious, it's just effective.
Contrast is used to help move the audience’s focus to the most important things they should see and understand. Usually, whatever element has the largest contrast is understood to be the most important thing on the screen. Contrast enables us to get a faster understanding of hierarchy and to quickly see important pieces of information. It can be created through color, shape, size, interaction, proximity, font choices, symmetry, and the list goes on. Color contrast, in particular, is incredibly important for accessibility.
Repetition is about unity and consistency. It helps people quickly understand what they’re looking at because they can see all similar elements.
Think about repetition this way: it’s a lot easier to look at 40 identical objects than 40 unique ones. With the unique objects, your brain has to parse each one separately. Whereas with repetition, your brain can group all like objects together and quickly understand what’s going on.
As repetition is all about consistency, it’s super important to keep patterns (colors, fonts, branding, and functionality) consistent across a product.
Alignment is about the organization of elements relative to a line or margin. A design with poor alignment is like walking into a room that’s cluttered and hard to navigate. It makes you uneasy and it can be frustrating to try to make sense of everything around you. Plus, you can bruise your shins.
Alignment is important for four reasons:
1. It matches how people naturally scan and focus on content.
2. It’s visually appealing.
3. It provides a sense of balance.
4. And it creates a relationship between similarly aligned elements.
There are two basic kinds of alignment, edge alignment and center alignment. With edge alignment, elements are aligned consistently to the left or right. With center alignment, elements are aligned consistently in the center.
Using a grid for alignment can really help create a sense of cohesion and relationship among elements.
This principle states that elements that are close together are seen as related. Closeness shows connectedness. This helps create perceived groupings, which reduce cognitive load and increase readability.
The secret to great design is in the way visual elements are arranged in relation to one another. That’s what layout design is all about.
