Hierarchy is the arrangement of people, items, or in our case, type, in order of importance. Without hierarchy, design tends to fall apart and become a big mass of confusion leading to headaches from trying to figure out what is what. I’m sure you’ve seen what I’m talking about, whether it was on a website that had so much content that it all ran together without any organization or maybe just a small poster or flyer with so many eye-catching elements you weren’t sure what the point was. Without hierarchy, all order is lost.
Thankfully, typography is an easy solution to fixing this problem. Type can be used to set elements apart from each other so that they are organized and so that the most important element catches your eye first.
There are many ways to do this. One of the easiest ways is to simply make it bigger than the rest of the text. That’s what newspapers do. Other ways of doing this include changing the font (make it bold, or italic maybe), changing the typeface (but make sure it corresponds with the feel of the rest of the type), or make it a different color (for example, the heading of this blog post is in red, while the actual text is black). Having said that, one must also be careful not to overuse the big header text or use ten different colors or typefaces-that’s when hierarchy is lost and it all begins to run together. Don’t overdo it. Don’t overemphasize in your attempts to emphasize a little.
When hierarchy is used, you’ll find the text guides you through itself pretty easily. It doesn’t happen by accident. When designing, you have to find ways to get your point across and do it as quickly as possible so as not to lose the reader’s interest or confuse and frustrate them. Using typography to create effective hierarchy is one good way of doing that.
