Finding balance

Balancing elements on the page comes down to two key factors—weight and position. The weight of elements refers to its tendency to draw the eye away from the visual center of the page. Position, of course, means placement relative to the focus or field. Items that are located in the fringe, in particular, the right side or upper half, are extremely likely to distract the view from the focal point. Centrally located items can often be viewed with little or no eye movement away from the center, and because of our left to right reading habits, the left side and the lower half are typically ignored by the viewer until they are done with the items in the center. Regular and compact shapes appear heavier than irregular or diffuse shapes. Isolated items draw the eye more than members of a group, and large elements more so than small.

The following table is a relative weight of elements on a page:

Some of these are easy to control, by changing the color, or making line weights or fonts thinner, while others are more difficult. Many of these weight factors are also related to the position on the page. We can't shift the islands in an archipelago to make them suit our need for weight in the center of the page, but we can adjust the elements around them to make the islands appear to be the heaviest part of the map. 

Here's an example using Hawaii. The islands themselves are positioned nicely along the natural eye path, but they don't stand out as well as they should. They are also naturally off-balance, most of the weight is in the lower-right corner. The sparseness of actual land means that most of the map, and all of the elements, are located in the fringe: 

Now, let's change the weight of a few things. Even though the title is heavy and in the upper-right corner, it's a single word, so it's a quick glance and back to the map, unlike our complex map elements from before. The islands are brought into prominence with a bold outline, and the map elements are softened, making them less attention-grabbing. Without changing the position of any elements, the tracking is made easier by drawing attention to the important parts of the map as shown in the following figure:

Lessening the weight of the elements also allows us to put more stuff in the lower-left part of the map, where there is plenty of room, without bogging the whole thing down. We still have a nice stable platform of aligned elements along the bottom, and the bold title balances the lower-left cluster, and lifts the eye up, helping to keep it from settling into the largest island.

While we can't change the geography of our map location, we can choose where everything else is placed. We've already decided that we need to have the main focus of the map located around the visual center, but how do we place everything else? Sometimes, as with Hawaii, the shape of the map determines where elements should go. The arrangement of islands almost exactly fits the path along which the eye tracks naturally. Sometimes we have more freedom to choose, and sometimes the geography runs counter to the natural eye path, from lower-left to upper-right, and we have to add weight on the left side of the page just to balance it. When we are measuring balance, we want to compare left to right, and top to bottom. Since we know perfect symmetry is seldom possible, how do we achieve this?

Unfortunately, there's no perfect formula, and developing a keen sense of balance comes only with practice. However, a good place to start is by adding grid lines to your layout to divide your page into left/right and top/bottom. The following figure shows a page divided into quarters, with a third guide added to indicate the visual center. We want to concentrate the reader's attention here, but we may shift slightly off towards left or right to add visual interest and make way for a legend, if it is sizeable and the shape of the geography lends itself. Recall that the upper-right is the most distracting place to put elements, and the lower-left the least. We should focus on limiting that top-right to title or map pieces, and the lower-left can carry the weight of a large block of text or a heavy legend:

That said, a lot of this depends on the overall density of the map subject. In, Figure 3.6, our geography is somewhat sparse, which restricts us to light weights or sparse distribution for everything else. Sometimes, our map fills the Map Frame, and we have to move elements outside the frame completely, as with this layout for a section of Manhattan:

In this case, a lot of the balance is managed by the Map Frame itself, and we only have to worry about balancing the elements across the bottom. This is also a handy strategy if you're building a map series with a lot of different maps that make homogenous element placement difficult.

Let's practice with a slightly more complicated area. We already know that we can use guides in Layout View to help you find print margins, but we can also use them to help place elements and establish balance, as shown in, Figure 3.7:

1. Open the compilation project and insert a New Layout. Select Letter from the ANSI Portrait category as your size and orientation.
2. First, let's add in our page margins. Right-click on the ruler and select Add Guides….
3. Select Both to place around all margins. Under Placement, select Offset from edge and set the Margin to 0.25 inches, which is suitable for most printers. 
4. Now, let's create a placement grid. Right-click on the top ruler and select Add Guides…. By selecting this on the top ruler, the selection defaults to Vertical. Our paper size is 8 ½ inches x 11 inches, so let's add a vertical guide at 4.25 inches. Select Single location, and set Position to 4.25 inches.
5. Right-click on the ruler on the left to set a horizontal guide at a single location at 5.5 inches.
6. Let's add one more for the visual center. Our page height is 11 inches, so 5% is just over half an inch. Set a horizontal guide at 6 inches (half the page height plus half an inch). Your page should now look like, Figure 3.7.
7. From the Insert tab, select Map Frame, and add the NZ bookmark. Use the handles to stretch the Map Frame, and snap it to your print margins.
8. Add in a Scale Bar and North Arrow, and a title. Since we don't yet know the subject of this map, we'll call it something really imaginative, like New Zealand. Remember that your title is in the second tier of information, so it should be nice and large.
9. Add some map credits—name, date, and source information. Remember this is tertiary stuff, so no matter how proud you are of a map, it should be pretty small text, generally around 8 pt font.
10. To make a legend placeholder, add a Rectangle from the Insert tab. Click and drag a box somewhere in the empty space on your map. I added a small piece of text to mine to keep track of what it represents, but that's up to you.

Now we have a little dilemma—do we put it over or under the land mass? We know that things on the left are lighter than things on the right, but things on the top are heavier than the bottom. So, what's the answer? It depends on what else is happening with the map. First, how many legend items will you have? If it's only one or two, that changes the weight of the legend.

It might fit right at the visual center, to the left of the islands. If it's a big, heavy legend, the best place is probably the lower-right, and you can balance it out by changing the title weight and position, maybe shifting the island north a little. What else is going on this map? Are you labeling the water bodies? What about the islands? Here are a few examples:

Experiment with your layout—remember that there is no absolute right way to do it, just try to achieve an overall sense of balance. Also remember that whitespace is a good thing, and you don't have to fill up every square inch of paper.