Within any arrangement of text or groups of text, there is positive and negative figure and ground, information and empty space. The choice in how the information and empty space are arranged is known as organization. Proximity is the closeness in space of two things. Katz uses the example of the menu with the English translations and the Italian descriptions. The two things are so close together, that it is hard to understand the menu. Hierarchy is a matter of ranking which information is the most important and putting it first. This must be textual as well as visual and should be staged so that the information has the greatest usefulness.

The following link is an example I found that fails with organization and proximity. Not only is this graph difficult to understand, the bars are too close together. It is hard to tell which bar goes with which word.

https://www.google.com/search?q=graphics+with+too+close+proximity&hl=en&...