100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, 2nd Edition

9 People Believe that Things that are close Together Belong Together

If two items are near each other (a photo and text, for example), then people assume they go together. This connection is strongest for items that are together left to right.

In Figure 9.1, the distance between columns is the same as the distance between rows. This makes it difficult to know which headings and photos belong together. Because the left-to-right connection is stronger than the top-to-bottom connection—and in the absence of any other visual cues—most people will assume that a heading on the left goes with the picture to its right. This is not the case, which makes the page hard to use.

Figure 9.1 It’s hard to tell which heading goes with which photo

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