Visual design issue in 3.2b1

WP 3.2 is looking great except for its visual hierarchy. There’s not enough visual differentiation and/or connection between elements, and so the eyes don’t know where to go.

There is only one strong, the dark menu highlighter. And it is too strong. From it, the eye struggles to determine where to go, especially when one of the lower menus is selected. A visual connection would help.

3.1 had the bar across the top which always helped the eye find its way back to the top of the page.

My advice would be to lighten the menu selector and strengthen something at the top of the page – eg the blog name, or the section title.

I’ve mocked up one idea to compare.

The first image is stock 3.2. Notice from the menu selector, your eye wants to go to the save button, instead of the top of the page. And even when you go to the top, the strong menu selector is still pulling at your eye. https://d.pr/mgS9

In the revised suggestion though, the eye firstly isn’t drawn too strongly to the menu selector, and the similarity between the colour of the selector and the top bar (the design principle of repetition) helps correlate what’s happening in the sidebar and the main area. The eye easily flows from the menu selector to the top of the page, and then to the section title and downwards thru the items. https://d.pr/Yxk9

This, of course, is just one solution. You might choose instead to strengthen the section titles or come up with a different one.