The Basics of Layout

Every designer should know the basics of layout.¹

I don’t design books, and despite ostensibly being a UX designer, I don’t design apps or websites. I do design slides, (or possibly slidedocs).

Slides are single pages, so the Canons of Page Construction tend not to work for them. I do love a good construction diagram though.

For slides, I start with a 14x8 grid in Keynote. I built my first one using the instructions in this Medium post. The outer columns and rows are gutters, so the actual working space is 12x6.

Type sizes are trickier. I tend towards the safety of a 1:2 ratio of type sizes. That is, if you start with a 24pt base size you double the type size for each level up in your type hierarchy. Though a golden ratio is probably more pleasing.

After that, for me, the basics of layout lean towards thinking about visual hierarchy. And practice.

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1. I’m following Danah Abdulla’s Designerly Ways of Knowing↩︎

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