The Practical Guide to Exploring Multiple Layouts in Design

Have you ever stared at a blank page and felt intimidated to start? It could be that you don’t want to make a “mistake,” or simply don’t know where to begin. I’ve been there. But what if I told you there’s no single perfect solution, and that exploration is how you find the best design solution.

In this video, I explore over 75 layouts using my editorial approach to layout design.

From classic grids to playful collages and everything in between, my exploration showcases a breadth of different design possibilities, using the same content.

Here are the takeaways from my exploration:

Change the Focal Point

A great place to start is using the rule of thirds. There four intersection of the grid lines, which you can use to place your focal point.

Here are four layouts using those focal points.

You can also use the direct center as a focal point.

Change the Image

The wine glass in the above examples was sitting on a white background, which gave the page some additional white space. We can change the image using something more lifestyle. Still using the rule of thirds, we can anchor our hero image in the four corners of the page for different options.

Change the Size of Elements

The page is pretty full and can feel heavy. In design, we balance heaviness with white space. To create more space on the page, we would have to make our hero image smaller. Continuing with the rule of thirds, we can use the different modules to anchor the image instead. Below are eight options. The center option didn’t really work for this direction, but we did already so a version with that focal point above.

I’ve been using the photo to anchor the layout, but we can also use the statistic. Two options to try would be a horizontal and a vertical. The exploration for the horizontal option is below.

And here are the options for the vertical statistic.

Change the Image Orientation

All the example have used a vertical image. By using an image with a horizontal orientation, our layout changes significantly.

You can get even more options by simply changing the hero image. You don’t even need to change the layout.

An Option Using Typography Only

We must always be able to communicate by type and type alone. Below are two different type directions. The first direction, I took inspiration from some steakhouse menus, and then I was really into those painted signs from older steakhouses, so I explored that as well.

Change the Color

The black and white options with type work just fine, which also means they’re going to work in color! Here are three. You can do as many variations as you want. The goal for color exploration is to be able to compare the different palettes before making a decision.

Here are color variations with the other layout.

Regarding color, it doesn’t need to be distributed throughout the layout. You can also use it to call something out through color blocking.

Push a Previous Option

When you’ve done enough options and you’re reviewing the layouts, instead of changing something, see if there’s something you can “push.”

In the layouts below, I really enjoyed the overlap caused by the glasses.

It’s a really nice moment in the layout, but it can be more dramatic. Here are four layout options, again anchoring our image to the four corners of the page.