Alignment

Alignment derives from the standardized horizontal and vertical placement of design objects. Textual alignment is a deeply ingrained method to signify a textual design object's classification (such as paragraph or headline ) and semantic importance. At the document level, alignment of text, images, and other graphic marks fosters effective use of white space.

Alignment is heavily connected with other design principles:

• Alignments must be consistent to equate similar design objects and create meaning effectively.
• Moving a design object out of alignment grants it explicit contrast.
• Design objects that share alignment are visually grouped, which implies their semantic similarity.
• Alignment is a primary method to establish order and informational sequence (e.g., an indented bullet list).
• Alignments create visual patterns and thus contribute to a document's balance.