Communication Patterns

Chapter 6. Composition

Visual composition is an essential aspect of software architecture diagrams; it helps you convey the structure, relationships, and dependencies of the system being documented. Effective visual composition ensures that diagrams are legible and improves the ease with which the audience can understand them.

In this chapter, you will explore how the composition of your diagrams can increase audience comprehension, how to avoid misleading your audience, and how to guide them through the narrative of your diagrams.

Illegible Diagrams

When you create a diagram, you need to consider how it will be consumed and who will consume it. This section covers how to avoid the illegible diagrams antipattern.

When creating a diagram in a tool such as draw.io or Visio, most people accept the default canvas to work on. That default is typically something like A4 or Letter paper size in portrait orientation. Is your audience going to view your diagram on a printed piece of paper in portrait? These days, that is unlikely.

Maybe your audience will consume the diagram within a document in Microsoft Word or Apache OpenOffice Writer (where the defaults, again, are A4 or Letter in portrait), but if your diagram is created on a portrait canvas, the audience is unlikely to be able to view it in its entirety on a computer screen (which is landscape) without having to zoom out and risk not being able to read the text or other details.

The majority of diagramming tools, including draw.io ...