WEBVTT 00:00:03.040 --> 00:00:06.160 One of the other tools you have in your toolbox 00:00:06.160 --> 00:00:09.000 for making visual design is alignment. 00:00:13.040 --> 00:00:16.560 So, let's see how you can use this in order to help you 00:00:16.560 --> 00:00:19.560 help the user achieve things. 00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:23.894 So, first of all, let's think about text. Now, what I'm going to do is assume 00:00:23.894 --> 00:00:27.291 that I'm an English speaker and I'm an English writer. 00:00:27.291 --> 00:00:31.590 And so, I have a left-to-right text that I use. 00:00:31.590 --> 00:00:38.297 I'm also learning a bit of Welsh. And Welsh also is a left-to-right language, as are most European languages. 00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:41.440 If you come from a language which is the other way round, 00:00:41.440 --> 00:00:45.520 or if your users' are right-to-left languages, then you need to flip 00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:50.160 everything I say for the next slide or two the other way round as well. 00:00:50.320 --> 00:00:54.480 So, being aware of your users is absolutely crucial here. 00:00:54.480 --> 00:00:58.928 But I am going to assume left to right. So, for left-to-right text, 00:00:58.928 --> 00:01:02.543 then you normally want to align things to the left. 00:01:02.543 --> 00:01:07.373 And this is the most common. You'll have seen this in many, many layouts. 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:10.480 So, the reason for that, though, 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:13.920 is that if you're scanning text, you read left to right, 00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:19.167 and therefore you want your eyes to go down and very rapidly 00:01:19.440 --> 00:01:23.120 move down the left-hand side of that text and scan the beginning. 00:01:23.120 --> 00:01:28.454 This is partly driven by the fact, too, that you distinguish that beginning bit first. 00:01:28.454 --> 00:01:32.640 There may be contexts where the end of a sentence or the end of a title 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:36.000 is the most critical bit. So, you might want to reverse this. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:41.795 So, again, think purpose. Why is somebody looking at this line of text items? 00:01:41.795 --> 00:01:45.527 And if what they're trying to do is scan something and if what they'd like you to distinguish, 00:01:45.527 --> 00:01:50.302 which is the most common case, is the front of the text, then you left-align. 00:01:50.400 --> 00:01:54.607 It does tend to be a bit boring sometimes. So, you might want to mix it up. 00:01:54.800 --> 00:01:57.360 But if you do, and if you right-align – and I 00:01:57.360 --> 00:02:00.560 have used right-aligned text; there's occasions I've used it – 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:04.720 you have to know that makes quick scanning to find something more difficult. 00:02:04.720 --> 00:02:07.920 However, there might be... if the context is 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:12.000 somebody knows the name of a film and they're trying to find it 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:16.092 in order to choose it, and they want to do that quickly because it's about to start in a few minutes 00:02:16.092 --> 00:02:18.107 and it's a live film, 00:02:18.280 --> 00:02:21.000 you want to make that as easy to scan as possible. 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:25.105 However, perhaps if you're just making new suggestions of films to the user 00:02:25.105 --> 00:02:29.902 and the user doesn't necessarily recognize them straight away 00:02:29.902 --> 00:02:34.640 – so, what you're doing: it's a range of things they're looking at – then it may not matter as much 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:36.720 whether they're left-aligned, right-aligned, 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:39.105 or maybe center-aligned in the middle. 00:02:39.105 --> 00:02:42.218 So, there are times for special effects when you want to do that. 00:02:42.218 --> 00:02:45.857 But you have to understand then that a particular purpose, which is scanning 00:02:45.857 --> 00:02:48.886 to find something that you recognize is going to be harder.