Declaration of Rights New Hampshire
The pattern
This still is filed under Exhibit in the column.
Define
An image is dropped into the column of type so the reader meets picture and argument in one scan.
Mechanism
In-flow exhibit. The figure is not a separate see fig. 2. It starts the paragraph. Eye and mind start together.
Verdict
Long copy must show as well as tell: a product cutaway, a before/after, a map in the story.
Why it works
Hierarchy is built purely from size, case and italic, three heading levels with nothing else, which is why the page still sorts itself in one glance two and a half centuries later. The italic ordinals turn a wall of legal prose into a numbered checklist, giving the reader an entry point at any line instead of demanding he start at the top. Rights are printed before machinery, so the reader receives what he gets before he is told what he must do, the same running order a working offer page uses. And the two drop initials mark exactly the two places a reader must not skip, the justification and the first declaration, so the eye is steered without a single graphic device.
Steal this when
Steal this when a long, obligatory, unexciting document still has to be read and approved by ordinary people, and you cannot shorten it. Steal the ordering in particular: lead with what the reader is given, put the procedure that binds him second.