[Sigia-l] Visual Balance vs. Left Leaning Layouts

[James Spahr]

>
> 2] Those designers, always the hotheads. Tee hee.
>

Yea, the whole lot of us. Be careful...

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what "Visual Balance" means. If 
it means the designers are trying to remove all visual tension and 
contrast in the page -- they should be brought out back and flogged.

>
> 2) The display be visually balanced (not to much
> optical weight on one side
> or the other)?

This is *undesirable* for so many reasons. We've already covered the 
usability and IA issues -- in this context (data rich, low resolution 
environment) the designer should be striving to create order in the 
page (this is what designers (falsely?) call 'hierarchy').

Making things 'balanced' means that they are striving to remove order. 
This is horrible. You want unbalance -- how else are you suppose to 
visually show what elements on the page are important and which ones 
are not so much so?

I'd also like to point out that this issue of wanting to create balance 
is one of the biggest habits of sophomores and juniors that I (and the 
other professors that I talk to at school*) try to break.

James.
(* I teach graphic design at Pratt)