Rhythm and Repetition

This snippet from the US Republican Party's homepage (no affiliation is implied), shows rhythm in effect.

The section headline style is repeated, all the instances are left-aligned and separated with a common horizontal divider. This creates a rhythm. Once you've decoded even one or two examples, your brain creates a rule or pattern on the fly You then use that rule to recognise and interpret subsequent examples of the header.

The brain also applies rules in this way when scanning a page.

You quickly notice that the bottom Features are also clearly related. As well as being horizontally aligned, rhythm is also noticeable in their regular size, regular spacing and repeated styles of the images, headlines and copy

In this example, the 6 main navigation links aren't all grouped or contained spatially, or aligned around any common axis. They are clearly associated as peers, which is effected through rhythm.

The rhythm is created through a number of stylistic features: font, visual layout of each item, and a roughly circular arrangement.

Using rhythm allows for a spacious and informal layout, using an elegant balance, without loss of clarity.