How I Build Message Hierarchy Before I Touch Design

Before anything visual happens in a project, I spend time working out the order of things. Not the layout, not the typography — the messages. The hierarchy underneath the language. It decides what the reader notices, what they ignore, and what stays with them after they leave the page.

It always starts the same way: I try to understand the one thing the business is actually trying to say. Not the long version they give me on a call, but the line that sits beneath it. Every project has one. Once that’s clear, everything else becomes easier to place.

Most people read online with half their attention. They’re skimming, filtering, making fast decisions. They don’t move through a page the way designers imagine they do. They graze. So the message hierarchy has to respect that. It has to meet the reader where they are, not where the business wants them to be.

I usually begin with a few rough phrases — nothing polished. Just the core idea, a supporting line, maybe a quiet reassurance underneath it. These pieces form the spine. Then I look at how the story actually wants to unfold. What comes first because it has to? What needs to sit lower down because it’s important but not decisive? Where does clarity matter more than persuasion?

There’s often a moment when something clicks: the top line sharpens, the secondary lines fall into place, and the project starts to feel like it’s saying one thing instead of ten. That’s when I know the design will be straightforward. Good hierarchy makes the visual layer almost inevitable.

I think of message hierarchy as a kind of internal architecture. If it’s solid, the design doesn’t need to work as hard. If it’s confused, every visual decision feels like an argument. This is why I do this work before I open any design tool. The hierarchy holds the shape of the project. The design just expresses it.

This is the part of the process I return to the most. It’s quiet, and sometimes slow, but it’s the thing that gives the whole project its direction. Once the words are in the right order, the rest of the work can breathe.

— Elia