Context

"Design Rules for Organizing
Elements on Screen

"All the news that's fit to print.” —New York Times masthead slogan

"All the news that's print to fit.” —A poke by Al Harum Sr., the author's grandfather, in a book on page layout


Once you have selected a design pattern for a layout, you will be placing elements on the screen. The same rules of scale present at each step of the way so far will be useful again.

Organize your elements in groups based upon their meanings and function. When possible, use convention and consistency to communicate what an element is without the use of a label. For instance, postal codes might be placed at the bottom of a grouping with other address elements, to the right of the state or province. This is more difficult to accomplish with data entry layouts.

Once you have found a grouping method, re-use it vigorously, always showing certain fields together, with the same formatting. This defines a visual "chunk" that you can re-use throughout an application. As many as a half dozen fields can be experienced as a single object by users, reducing the cognitive load of a layout.

When labels are needed, format them to be easily readable without overpowering the fields they describe.

Prioritize information, with the most important information at upper left, or as the leftmost item in a chunk, or as the first or second tab in a group. Do not use placement and proximity randomly. For more on type design principles, see Robin Williams' excellent book [The Non-Designer's Design Book].

Use the simplest layout that will work: single column is best, two columns is second best, three columns need a good reason to be there. Avoid hybrid layouts with irregular structures."

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