Rhythm

The felt pattern of repetition and interval across a design. Set a rhythm and the eye moves willingly; break it and you make a moment.

Rhythm is the pattern a design keeps: repeated spacing, recurring structure, intervals the eye learns after one screen and then rides. It is why a long page can feel effortless, the reader stops navigating and starts moving to the beat the layout set.

Once a rhythm holds, breaking it becomes a tool. The full-width band interrupting a column, the sudden asymmetry after strict symmetry: these land precisely because everything before them kept time. A page with no rhythm cannot make a moment, because nothing can interrupt what was never steady.