Proximity

In this rule, we will break Michael Corleone’s mentality in the Godfather with his infamous quote, “Keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer”.  With proximity, keep your friends (or related items close) and keep your enemies (or items that have conflicting messages) far away.  In other words, group elements that have similarities and create distance with elements that have differences.This all comes down to organization, when you are building a website the grouping of elements can help dictate the dialogue with the viewer.

For example you place all of your clothes in the closet and dresser drawers in your bedroom, and you place cooking materials in the drawers in your kitchen.  Poor proximity would be placing clothing in the kitchen and placing pots and pans in the bedroom.

Grouping elements within the design is one of the core keys to proximity.  Try to keep similar items in the same general vicinity.

Think of your site in terms of feng shui, decide on the visitors entrance (first place they will view), and align like minded elements accordingly.

Make sure to avoid organizing too many disparate elements for a page. A good practice is to have another individual test your page, and provide feedback on where their eye was drawn to as they looked through the page.