There’s nothing worse than popping open a document
from a client and finding yourself face to face
with 50 pages of text. It’s daunting, especially if you
don’t have many—or any—images to break things
up. In fact, working on this kind of project can
make you feel like you’ve been asked to complete a
puzzle where a few of the key pieces have gone hopelessly
missing. Here’s a look at basic approaches to
typography, layout, and hierarchy that can help you
assemble the pieces in a way that makes sense for
your audience and your client.
Easy on the eyes
Greg Salmela, a principal at Aegis in Toronto, approaches text-heavy projects
with reader ergonomics in mind. “It’s all about
how human beings organize, retain, and absorb
information,” he says. Just as in product design, an
ergonomic layout needs to lessen strain on a reader’s
eyes and mind. Salmela says the human brain naturally
wants to simplify and apply hierarchy to large
amounts of information.
A good design should facilitate both these natural
tendencies. Salmela recommends creating no
more than three levels of elements on any given layout.
One spread, for example, might have a main
headline, subheads, and body copy—and readers
should be able to easily distinguish the relative importance
of each. “The problem is when designers
are more interested in aesthetics than information
architecture,” he says. “Our driving force is relevance
and clarity—not putting anything on the page that
doesn’t have value to the reader.”
Aegis: Thomson
annual report
“Everything is designed
for comfort,”
says Greg Salmela, a
principal at Aegis. FF
Meta was chosen as
the report’s only font
because it is clear and
has a higher density
than other sans-serif
fonts. Therefore, it
could be used at a
smaller size without
sacrificing legibility.
A change in the
paper’s color—from
white to gray—helps
distinguish the imageheavy
branding portion
of the report
from the text-heavy
financial section.
Justified columns
reinforce the composition
in a text-heavy
layout. Here, justification
clearly defines
a two-column grid
without adding the
busyness of a rag.
White dividing lines
within the tables are
less “noisy” than black
ones. “We just wanted
the lines to be strong
enough to indicate
division of space,”
Salmela says. For the
reader, the subtle lines
don’t require greater
visibility to do the job.
