Apple.com's Visual Hierarchy

by January 17, 2018

Recently, I dusted off my full day workshop on visual communication for a room full of product managers. While discussing the role of visual hierarchy in screen layouts, I was struck by how many people were impressed at the consistency Apple.com (one of my examples) showed over the years.

Apple's Website in 2001 and 2017

Over the past 17 years, Apple.com's visual style had changed through the application of new fonts, colors, and textures but its underlying layout (or its visual organization) had not.

Apple's Website from 1998 and 2018

Looking even further back, Apple.com has retained the same layout structure (primary promotion, 4 secondary promotions, global navigation, and footer navigation) for over twenty years. I guess if your visual hierarchy ain't broke... don't fix it.