Visual Design Solutions: Principles and Creative Inspiration for Learning Professionals

Chapter 11Group for Meaning

“Good information design depends on strategies for reducing the perceptual and cognitive effort required to understand an image.”

— DeCarlo and Santella

The Framework

THIS CHAPTER answers these questions:

• Why is grouping important to learning?
• What visual conditions create grouping?
• How can grouping help me communicate?

Did you ever arrive in a foreign culture and feel confused? Things look unlike anything you've seen before. It takes a while to become oriented in an unfamiliar place—to structure the scene so you understand what's going on. If you were aware of the sensory information picked up by your eyes when you first look at a graphic, it would be an analogous experience. Sensory information is a jumble of disorganized input until we structure it and give it meaning.

The brain organizes sensory information into patterns, based on certain mechanisms of perception. If you structure your graphics into these easily recognized patterns, they are likely to be understood quickly and clearly.

In this chapter, you will learn ways to make graphics more meaningful by organizing visual information into groups.

Importance of Grouping in Learning

One of the key ways that people understand a graphic is by initially seeing the groups in it before they see the individual parts. In Chapter 9, Unify the Design, you saw an example of how seeing the shape ...