The hierarchy is one of the main fundamental design principles and as a designer hierarchy is so important as it creates an order of importance within design elements, and also directs attention, whilst making information, easy to understand for the viewer.

And don’t worry I’m going to explain everything in detail so you understand fully what hierarchy is and why you should be using it.

So the three-stage process of marketing hierarchy is as follows. Attract, which is bringing in the viewer, intrigue, which is spiking the interest, and then delivering the message.

These are the three steps a viewer will go through when viewing an effective design, and that viewer probably won’t even be aware that it’s happening.

But let’s take a look at an example this explains this process. This Adidas poster is a prime example of this triad of marketing hierarchy, the shoe and the paint splashed across the shoe are the initial aspects that will grab the attention of most viewers.

This is the thing that will draw them into the design. Secondly, the quote “time to change up” will create some kind of intrigue and interest in that person. And this is going to hold them long enough, so they want to read on in the design.

And then below we have the message delivery. The design is literally a visual trap because it draws you in, makes you interested and then you read the message that the designer wanted you to read all because of hierarchy.

When using hierarchy on your designs, you will probably use several different versions of it on one single design. Here are a few of the main ways to use hierarchy.

So firstly, color is highly important and it is a great way to attract or to place things in a particular order. There is actually a chart that places color in order from the ones that are the most attention-grabbing all the way down to the ones that are less attention-seeking.

Now red is a color, at the front of this chart, because it’s the color, the eyes will go to first and foremost. This is the reason for notifications and alerts, often being red or orange on App design. Now you can draw the viewer’s attention to a specific area through color alone.

One common tactic is to have a dull, even grayscale design with one single element in color. As you can see here. Another common but essential hierarchy method is to leverage the use of size, the larger something is on a design, the more important it is going to appear.

It’s also the first the eye will actually see and view when someone’s looking at your work, and so it can be used as the first part of a hierarchy process that we spoke about earlier. And that is the attract phase.

You will often see this in advertising campaigns for say cell phones or watches that depict their product as a huge part of the design, kind of focal points, and this is often where the consumer will begin their journey. Whilst reviewing the design size is also very important when concerning the hierarchy of typography, you will see this on magazines, advertising campaigns posters, and even website design.

Main headings will be large, and often just a couple of words or short sentences. This can be the attraction phase. Then we have the secondary heading that might cause the intrigue. And then the smaller tanks which is often the body text or the message. So as you can see, typography fits nicely into this three-stage process of marketing hierarchy.

And I’m sure you’ve seen it pretty much everywhere. Color of typography is also a great method, as seen here in this Nike advert, having text in different sizes and weights will also look 10 times better on a design, as opposed to everything being the same appearance, in terms of typography.

I’m going to leave you with a kind of “hierarchy-ception” thoughts that I came across long ago, and a magazine can be thought of as hierarchy in itself because the front cover is what draws you in. And then the contents inside are the secondary or third phases. But once you actually peel back the pages and look inside, you have a double-page spread that has its own ecosystem of hierarchy in it with headings imagery body text, and so forth.

But even on a small section of this double-page spread, you can find little worlds of hierarchy in action. Say for example a small image with a heading below it in a bold font, and then body text below that in lighter fonts. Hierarchy is literally everywhere if you go looking for it, and your designs should include hierarchy, so you can allow the viewer to understand the information, and also so your design, goes through that three-stage process of attraction, intrigue and message delivery.