The article layout is not good? Here are 4 design principles that are essential for operations

In "A Design Book for Everyone", Robin Williams summarized four basic principles of design based on his many years of practical experience: intimacy, alignment, repetition, and contrast . These four principles are applicable to all design fields such as PPT (in fact, many PPT tutorial articles use these four principles), posters, typesetting, business cards, etc. They are very practical for new media operations , such as graphic typesetting, posters, QR codes, cover design and other aspects.

Intimacy

Before writing an article, we usually draw a simple logic diagram, and then slowly fill in the text according to this logic. In this way, the logic of the article will be clearer and readers will find it easier to read.

The basic logic of this article is drawn by Baidu Mind Map

By the same token, before arranging an article, you must first sort out the visual logic , and then use methods such as intimacy, alignment, repetition, and contrast to display the visual logic to make it as convenient for readers to read and remember as possible.

Intimacy is the first step to achieve visual logic. It means that the closer the content is, the closer it should be visually. Conversely, the more distant the content is, the farther it should be visually .

For example, the title and the body are two independent sections. The intimacy between the body should be higher than the intimacy between the body and the title. Therefore, there should be a clear distinction between the title and the body. This distinction can be achieved by using a blank line , a picture (such as a header image) or a separator (such as a guide):

Traditional typesetting generally distinguishes paragraphs by indenting the first line by 2 characters, but this method obviously does not conform to the principle of intimacy. The paragraph spacing is exactly the same as the line spacing, and it cannot effectively distinguish the paragraphs. Therefore, most new media editors now leave a blank line between paragraphs when typesetting, which effectively increases the distance between paragraphs and highlights the intimacy of each part.

If there is a title between paragraphs, please note that there should be a difference in the spacing between the title and the upper and lower paragraphs, because the title and the next paragraph are a whole and have little to do with the previous paragraph. This closeness should be reflected in the size of the spacing.

Additionally, image annotations should be placed closer to the image:

It is important to note that many public accounts have a lot of content at the end, such as author introduction, QR code, event information, etc. When there is too much content, special attention should be paid to partitioning, otherwise it is easy to get into chaos.

For example, can you tell at a glance that the picture on the left below contains several sections of content? It's difficult because there are no obvious partitions. In fact, the left picture contains four types of content: author introduction, message interaction, like and forwarding guidance, and keyword guidance (search for it yourself).

When encountering a situation where there are many content categories, the first thing to do is to determine whether some content can be deleted to reduce the cognitive burden on readers. Obviously, it is a bit complicated to put so many interactive methods such as leaving messages, liking, forwarding, and keywords together. Deleting one or two unimportant ones will make the interface look simpler (Sister Chen deleted the like and forwarding guide). For the remaining content, partition them by blank lines and separators (solid line boxes are used here).

PS: The revised WeChat picture and text push interface has caused a lot of controversy, but from the perspective of intimacy alone, the current version is obviously better, because the summary is a supplement to the title, and both are pure text, with a high degree of intimacy. Putting the two together is more in line with visual logic.

The left side is the old version of the picture and text push interface, and the right side is the new version of the picture and text push interface

Alignment

There are three alignment modes: center alignment, left alignment, and right alignment. In WeChat public account operation , the two most common methods are center alignment and left alignment:

For readers, center alignment is the easiest to read because the eyes can be completely focused on the middle part of the screen without moving left or right . However, this method is generally suitable for content with less content and more short sentences. Longer content is generally suitable for left alignment.

There is another alignment method that is very similar to left alignment: justification. Compared with left alignment, the edges of the two aligned texts are neater and the visual effect is better. Therefore, in new media typesetting, justification is generally used instead of left alignment:

For new designers, it is best to strictly follow one alignment method, otherwise it will cause confusion. If this is not possible, at least ensure that one alignment method is followed within the same content section. For example, the left picture below is a common situation. Two alignment methods appear in the same content section, making the interface look a bit confusing and the key points are not highlighted (the contrast principle will be discussed later).

With a slight adjustment, all the contents in the section are aligned to the center (because there are fewer words), and using the contrast principle, the font color and thickness of the key parts are modified, and the entire interface looks much neater (as shown in the upper right picture).

repeat

Repetition is an important principle for maintaining order. This includes repetition of fonts and font sizes, as well as repetition of colors and styles. For newcomers, it is important to always keep in mind to try to unify a series of elements such as fonts, font sizes, colors, etc. On the basis of unification, find out the parts that need to be emphasized, make changes , and strengthen them through the principle of contrast.

Repeated fonts, repeated font sizes (usually 14~16):

Repeating colors, repeating styles:

contrast

Intimacy, alignment and repetition, while ensuring a clean and tidy layout, can also bring dullness and tedium. So, we need one last effect - contrast.

The basic function of contrast is to highlight key points and increase readability .

For example, make the parts that need to be emphasized bold, enlarge, change the color, add background color, delete, underline, italicize, etc. one. some. symbol. Numbers, or some artistic processing , etc., can make the part that needs to be emphasized quickly stand out from the large amount of content.

The additional function of contrast is to effectively enhance the visual effect, break the dullness and attract the reader's attention .

For example, the poster of MUJI looks very simple, but in fact their designers are very good at using contrast to make the simple picture full of design sense. The picture below makes good use of the contrast between the horizontal and vertical distribution of text to break the dullness:

A similar approach can also be applied in the layout of public accounts:

It is important to note that you should either not use contrast or make it obvious . Otherwise, if two elements are too close, it will cause confusion because the reader will misunderstand whether you did it on purpose or made a mistake accidentally.

For example, when comparing "font size 16" and "font size 15", the difference is not obvious, but when comparing "font size 24" and "font size 15", the difference is much more obvious, and you can see the larger font at a glance.

summary

The first rule for new designers: add! The fewer elements you use at the beginning, the better, because the complexity of the design increases exponentially with each additional element (don't take it for granted that you are a design master).

1. Unify the font, size, color, and style of all content (repetition principle);

2. Select a unified alignment method (alignment principle);

3. Partition the content according to content logic (intimacy principle);

4. Contrast the parts that need to be emphasized (contrast principle).

The author of this article is @草莓学堂 and it is compiled and published by (青瓜传媒). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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