The Visual Structure of Concert Tickets
I consider hierarchy to be one of, if not the most, important element to consider when creating a design. I recently conducted some research to test if I was right; does hierarchy matter as much to others as it does to me?
The third chapter of Designing with the Mind in Mind, written by Jeff Johnson explains to the reader the importance of visual structure in design. To put it simply, when information is broken up, arranged in certain ways, and given hierarchy, our minds are able to understand and process it better.
The Process
I decided to test this theory using concert tickets. There’s quite a bit of important information to fit on a small piece of paper, and can cause confusion if not done correctly. I felt the strongest way to convey a good sense of hierarchy and visual structure would be a comparison model; a “good” and “bad” version so to speak.
The “bad” version of the ticket had no hierarchy whatsoever. The typeface chosen was all capital letters and the same size everywhere. There was repeated information across the whole ticket, some of which wasn’t even labeled. The design of this ticket isn’t very memorable and should be harder to navigate.
The “good” version of the ticket has a clear sense of hierarchy, as the name of the artist is the largest and heaviest weight type on the entire ticket, and the concert name is similar. There is added white space between chunks of information.
The tickets were purposefully given the same type and background colors so there wouldn’t be any bias.
The Testing
I interviewed a few people that were pretty likely to go see a concert and asked them to identify certain elements on the tickets, such as the performers name and how easy it was to find. I was surprised to find that all of my interviewees said the information on the “bad” ticket was easy to find, and even more surprised to hear that one person preferred the “bad” version over the “good” version.
Final Thoughts
After conducting my interviews, I have concluded that concert tickets may not have been the best example to show hierarchy in design. Since the “bad” versions of the tickets were modeled after real tickets, they might hold some nostalgic element to people, which creates a bias that I didn’t previously think of. I have also found that some people don’t care as much about hierarchy in design as I do, or at least, they consider other factors to be more important when choosing A or B.
A special thank you to my interviewees for participating.
