Hermann Grids, An optical Illusion Best Avoided

An interesting optical illusion is the so-called Hermann Grid illusion: the effect of seeing gray dots at the intersections of a black grid on a white background or a white grid on a black background.

While it’s an interesting optical illusion, it’s something we should avoid in management reporting:

Tables formatted with medium or thick black or gray borders tend to produce Hermann Grids. Just scan the table above and you should see the gray dots in the grid intersections.

To avoid this unpleasant and distracting effect, and to maximize the data-ink ratio follow this simple but very effective table design rule:

• Avoid using dark and heavy grids
• Use light gray grids instead

Above is the same table with light gray borders. This eliminates the Hermann Grid illusion and – by de-emphasizing the grid –  puts more emphasis on the numbers.

Here are some images I found on Google Image Search that show how popular it is to put your data behind Hermann Grids:

So I hope you are with me – get rid of the heavy grids and free your data!

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