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Lesson 3 of 11

Hierarchy

Size signals importance. The most important element should be impossible to miss.

Learn

Hierarchy is the ranking of information. The most important thing is biggest, the next thing smaller, the small print smallest. Done well, a viewer understands your page before reading a single word.

Same words, two very different pages

Cake sale Saturdayten until twoin the gym hall

No ranking. Three equal lines. What matters? You have to read everything to find out.

CAKE SALESaturday, 10 to 2gym hall

Ranked. One glance tells you the what, then the when, then the where.

The size ladder

1. The headline2. The helper line3. The details4. the tiny print nobody reads first

Every step down in size is a step down in importance. Ask: if someone reads only ONE thing, which should it be? That one goes biggest.

Wrong vs right

✕ Every line equal: what matters here?
✓ Size ranks the information for you

Seen in the wild

A newspaper front page is a masterclass in hierarchy; you can rank every piece of text by its size alone.

THE MORNING POST

Tuesday 7 July · Sunny, 24°

School robotics team takes national title

Team Sparks beat forty schools in Saturday's final

By R. Alvarez, Education Desk

The gym erupted as the little robot crossed the finish line two seconds clear of its rival. Months of lunchtime engineering had come down to a single flawless run.

Coach Ibarra credited the win to relentless testing. "We failed four hundred times in practice," she said, "so we didn't have to fail today."

1 2 3 4
  1. 1The masthead (the paper's own name) is the biggest thing: the paper's name outranks everything.
  2. 2The headline comes next in size: today's most important story.
  3. 3The subheading is smaller: it supports, never competes.
  4. 4Body text is smallest of all, and the writer's name smaller still. Four sizes, four ranks; readable at a glance.

Practice

Drag the pieces into place