Layout

Whenever separate visual elements are placed together on the same page they must be aligned to an invisible grid so that they look neat and organized. This invisible grid is called the page's layout.

For example, a document configured with standard 8 ½ x 11-inch pages will typically have its margins defaulted to 1 inch. These margins can be thought of as an invisible grid, with three columns, and three rows. The grid's first column would be 1 inch wide, its second column would be 6 ½ inches wide, and its third column would again be 1 inch wide, in order to add up to a width of 8 ½ inches. For the grid's rows, the first row would be 1 inch high, the second row would be 9 inches high, and its third row would again be 1 inch high, in order to add up to 11 inches in height.

Now, instead of thinking of the document as an 8 ½ x 11-inch page with 1-inch margins, we can more precisely describe it as a page with a layout consisting of a 3 x 3 grid, with the first and last columns being 1" wide, and the first and last rows being 1" high.

With this in mind, let's say we had a page with a few paragraphs of text, and we wanted to add an image. The typical way most people would add the image would be to insert it between two paragraphs, and adjust the image's height to fit the page. As images have a fixed aspect ratio - which is to say the ratio of its height to its width, which for a square would be 1:1 - when you adjust the height you also adjust the width of an image in order to maintain the image's aspect ratio. This means that if you reduced the image's height to fit the page, you would be adding empty space to the right of the image as its width decreases.

The typical way people would try to address this empty space is to wrap the text around the image, but this approach starts to become a problem when you have to add more visual elements such as another image, a chart, and a diagram - all on the same page. At this point our simple 3 x 3 grid layout defined by our default margins is not sufficient to properly align our content so that everything looks neat and organized.

To help address the issue of a having a bunch of visual elements scattered through our text, we might split the page vertically, such that instead of a 3 x 3 grid, we have a 5 x 3 grid. With this new grid the first and last column would still be 1 inch, but now the center has a 3-inch column, then a ½ inch spacer column, then another 3-inch column, such that we still end up with an 8 ½-inch-wide page.

Now, instead of having the text wrap around the image, chart, and diagram, we can have neat, organized columns where visual elements are stacked. To make things look really sharp, we would adjust the width of the images, charts, and diagrams to precisely match the width of the column that contained them, which should create a pleasing sense of order as we read the document from top to bottom and from left to right. This type of layout is called a multi-column layout.

In addition to stacking visual elements vertically so that they look neat and organized, multi-column layouts also make text easier to read, as it is easier to read shorter lines of text than longer lines of text.

For example, when reading a long article, if each line had around 60 characters it would be easier to read than if each line had 1000 characters. This has to do with the way our eyes read from left to right, whereby the more we have to shift our eyes from left to right and back again, the more difficult something is to read, as opposed to simply staring at a relatively narrow column of text where our eyes hardly have to move at all.

An important choice to make when using multi-column layouts is whether or not you should justify the alignment of the text within a column so that the right edge of the text always lines up with the right edge of the column. In many cases, this will make the column look neater and more organized, but if you are not careful with your choices of font size and column size, you can end up with obvious inconsistent gaps between words that will ultimately look worse than if you keep text left-aligned. This is where comparing the before and after of left-aligned versus a justified text alignment is a good idea, so that you can pick the alignment that you think looks best.

In addition to a simple split-page 5 x 3 grid layout with 2 columns of content, you might also choose a 7 x 3 grid layout with 3 columns of content. What you will find is that as you make adjustments in the width of each column, the style of the page will change dramatically, especially when each of the content-containing columns are of different widths. The key to using columns of different widths is to make them very different, as if they are only slightly different it may look like you have made a mistake. For example, you might have two narrow columns with text and charts, and then a wide column containing a diagram.

Once you have an understanding of how to separate and align content on a page with simple column grids, you can experiment with more complex grids, which might include headers, footers, and sidebars. Most document editing programs come with several different layouts you can try, but if you would like more customization options, you might try programs specifically designed for making advanced layouts such as Microsoft Visio or Lucidchart. These programs will have features specifically designed for complex grid layouts, such as automatically aligning items to a grid as they are dragged around and resized.

Whatever layout you choose, always remember that the goal is to help your document look neat and organized. If ever your layout makes your document look messy and jumbled, then you either need to adjust your grid, or opt for a simpler layout.