We describe a new method for visualization of directed graphs. The method combines constraint programming techniques with a high performance force-directed placement (FDP) algorithm so that the directed nature of the graph is highlighted while useful properties of FDP -such as emphasis of symmetries and preservation of proximity relations - are retained. Our algorithm automatically identi- fies those parts of the digraph that contain hierarchical information and draws them accordingly. Additionally, those parts that do not contain hierarchy are drawn at the same quality expected from a non-hierarchical, undirected layout algorithm. An interesting application of our algorithm is directional multidimensional scaling (DMDS). DMDS deals with low-dimensional embedding of multivariate data where we want to emphasize the overall flow in the data (e.g. chronological progress) along one of the axes.