One interesting thing to keep in mind wit the ‘Magic Number Seven’ is that it is one of those things that everybody believes to be true but has little basis in practice. Here’s a nice summary of why it is not particularly relevant for visual design (as are many of the things on this site if you have time to browse the entire UX Myths site)

http://uxmyths.com/post/931925744/myth-23-choices-should-always-be-limited-to-seven

On Apr 18, 2014, at 11:15 AM, Sean Hannan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> What¹s worked for us is education. I¹ve moaned about trying to implement
> publishing workflows and other automation-type solutions, but there are
> always edge cases (³This needs to go up RIGHT NOW!²) that break such
> things or turn it into such a bottleneck that everyone starts looking for
> ways around it.
> 
> We gave our content folks 3 heuristics to gauge their work:
> 
> 1. The Magic Number Seven
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two)
> 2. Optimize for F-shaped content scanning
> (http://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/)
> 3. Understand above/below the fold
> 
> You may notice that these heuristics have a lot to do with content
> prioritization and layout. That¹s not an accident. It turns out, when you
> get content creators to think about re-arranging their content, they are
> less inclined to do things like litter the page with bold and colors and
> exclamation marks, because they have better ways of drawing the users¹
> attention to the content (generally, by sticking it up top).  It also gets
> them to think about content as a whole. Are you miffed that no one is
> seeing your very important blinking rainbow text near the end of the page?
> Maybe it would be better suited on its own page with similar content that
> is of a more digestible length. That sort of thing.
> 
> -Sean
> 
> ---
> Sean Hannan
> Senior Web Developer
> Sheridan Libraries
> Johns Hopkins University
> 
> On 4/17/14, 7:42 PM, "Simon LeFranc" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> My organization has recently adopted an enterprise Content Management
>> System. For the first time, staff across 8 divisions became web authors,
>> given responsibility for their division's web pages. Training on the
>> software, which has a WYSIWYG interface for editing, is available and
>> with practice, all are capable of mastering the basic tools. Some simple
>> style decisions were made for them, however, it is extremely difficult to
>> get these folks not to elaborate on or improvise new styles.  Examples:
>> 
>>   making text red or another color in the belief that color will draw
>> readers' attention    making text bold and/or italic and/or the size of a
>> war-is-declared headline (see 1);    using images that are too small to
>> be effective    adding a few more images that are too small to be
>> effective    attempting to emphasize statements using ! or !! or !!!!!
>> writing in a too-informal tone ("Come on in outta the rain!") [We are a
>> research organization and museum.]    feeling compelled to ornament pages
>> with clipart, curlicues, et al.    centering everything
>> There is no one person in the organization with the time or authority to
>> act as editorial overseer. What are some techniques for ensuring that the
>> site maintains a clean, professional appearance?
>> 
>> Simon
>> 
>>