What Architecture Taught Me About Layout
Rooms, corridors and light: borrowing ideas from buildings to plan the flow of a page.
Jonas Verdin
Date
Category
Inspiration
Reading Time
2 min read
Before I designed screens, I spent years drawing buildings. I didn’t expect it to matter. It turns out nearly everything I know about layout I first learned from floor plans.
Plan before facade
An architect decides how people move through a building before deciding what it looks like. The facade is the last thing, and it is shaped by what happens inside.
I now approach a page the same way. Before color or type, I ask where a visitor enters, where they should go next, and what they pass on the way.
Circulation
In a building, circulation is the network of corridors, stairs and doors. On a page it is the path of the eye. Both go wrong the same way: too many routes, or a main route that is hard to find.
One main path that is obvious on arrival.
Secondary routes that never compete with it.
Places to pause, because nobody wants to move constantly.
Rooms and thresholds
A building is a series of rooms, and what makes a room feel like a room is its edges. Walls, doorways and changes of floor tell you where one space ends and another begins.
Sections are rooms
A long page works the same way. Each section should feel like a room with a clear purpose, separated from the next by spacing, a change of surface or a shift in scale.
Thresholds matter
The moment between rooms is where people decide whether to continue. In a layout, that moment is the heading and the first line beneath it. I spend more time on it than its size suggests.
Architecture | Layout |
|---|---|
Entrance | First screen |
Corridor | Navigation and scroll path |
Room | Section |
Threshold | Heading and spacing between sections |
Window | Image or moment of relief |
Proportion and a module
Good buildings repeat a small module so that everything feels related. A grid in design does the same job. I pick a base unit early, and every margin, gap and size is a multiple of it. The result is calm, even when I can’t say exactly why.
A good plan makes the facade almost easy.
Light and weight
Architects think about where light falls and where mass sits. In layout, those are contrast and visual weight. A heavy block on one side needs something to balance it, and a bright accent only works if it is surrounded by quiet.
What I carry over
I still sketch plans before screens, only now the plan is a page. If you want to see how I check the result afterwards, How I Review My Own Work follows on naturally.