Why some designs look messy, and others don’t

Use this incredibly simple rule that is, somehow, never mentioned in school or design courses.

Rey Node

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Humans like boxes.

We love boxes so much that they are central to both our visual and conceptual world. Stereotypes, music or art genres, religious or political views — all of them are boxes, or at least attempts to put stuff into them. But also in the physical world, 2D or 3D, we love boxes.

Here’s a neat little trick to show you what I mean: ask anyone to draw a circle on a piece of paper. Then ask them to draw something to contain the circle they drew. Guess what? Most people will draw a box around the circle.

This is remarkable, because a triangle, a hexagon, a wiggly-ass diamond, or even another circle would have sufficed just fine. But no: we like boxes. To put stuff into, stack them, align them, and stuff our attics or garages with them. Boxes feel solid because they are. In three dimensional space, a box is made up of six 2D boxes. Parabox. They’re almost like magic.

Now, before you get ahead of me: no — the ‘box’ is not the mystery design-rule I’m talking about. But boxes do have something to do with it; otherwise, I wouldn’t bore you with this introduction.

Let’s get to it. A two-dimensional box is made up of four lines. And, as we’ve seen with the circle, we are tempted to visualize boxes around everything we perceive in 2D space — e.g., UI…

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Rey Node
Rey Node

Written by Rey Node

Author of Being Creative is the Easy Part — Former creative agency co-founder (15 years)

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