When viewing a design, what is the intended order of visual focus? If the reader is left to their own devices, visual hierarchy must improve. This is the priority of interest on the canvas, determining where to look, what to read next, and what can wait. A banner, social post, or poster may have good information, but without visual hierarchy, they are difficult to follow.
Hierarchy is established via size, contrast, white space, position, weight, and color. Generally, the headline should have greater visual hierarchy than body text. An icon, date, label, or call-out requires sufficient contrast to be easily found but not so much that it competes with a headline. Body text requires adequate size for readability, but not so much that it calls for the most attention. When all information is the same size, weight, color, contrast, and position, there is no visual order of interest because everything has the same visual strength.
Take a simple example. If a social post contains a headline, a few sentences, one image, and a date, and if the headline and date have similar sizes, weights, colors, contrast, and white space, what will be seen first? The layout has order but no hierarchy because all elements call for the same attention, forcing the user to interpret the order themselves. In the same design, if the headline is enlarged, the body text reduced to make the headline stand, and the date and label stand with some color accent, then there is an order of interest. Nothing has changed but its order has become more clear.
To practice hierarchy, build a few versions of a single social post with identical images and text. One should have the headline have the most visual strength, one has the image have the most visual strength and the headline is reduced to support it, and another makes a date or label have visual strength with an accent color. Look at the options without thinking about beauty or preference, and instead see which option has the clearest order of visual interest. Which one tells the eye what to see first?
White space can play an implicit role in visual order. Elements within the same proximity are grouped and seen to belong together. Those with less proximity are less likely seen as a unit. Therefore, a headline with more white space will feel stronger without being enlarged or having increased weight. Conversely, elements close to each other can lose their strength if other elements compete. Before a designer makes a size, font, color, or weight change to create visual hierarchy, they can first consider if they can establish some breathing space or padding around the element of most visual interest.
A common way to correct hierarchy for beginners is to add more decoration. More font styles, effects, shapes, or colors typically only make hierarchy more challenging. To better establish the desired order, decrease the number of visually competing elements by defining the headline, the text, and a single detail. These should establish themselves via alignment, scale, color, and spacing, while the design as a whole feels guided rather than forced.
As a final step before exporting an image or posting to social, look at a finished design from a distance. You should be able to clearly feel the order of interest without needing to read every word; the most important element must be visible at once. Secondary, supporting, or tertiary elements cannot disappear entirely but should not compete. If everything stands at the same level of visual hierarchy without feeling, there is no visual order to be followed. The viewer must be able to easily see the path, which must come before details.