To control the layout of individual items inside a flex container, you can use the order property to rearrange items and the align-self property to override alignment on a per-item basis. By default, flex items appear in the order they are written in the HTML, and their alignment is determined by the container's align-items property. However, these defaults can be changed for specific items to create more flexible and dynamic layouts.

In the example above, the order property is used to change the visual sequence of the flex items. Although the HTML lists the items as "Second," "First," and "Third," the order values rearrange them visually so that "First" appears before "Second," and "Third" comes last. The default order value is 0, but you can assign any integer to control the sequence. This property does not change the document order, only how items are displayed within the flex container.

The align-self property lets you override the alignment set by the container’s align-items property for a single flex item. In the example above, the container aligns items to the flex-start of the cross axis. However, the first item uses align-self: flex-end, so it aligns itself to the flex-end instead. This is useful when you want one or more items to stand out or have a different alignment from the rest.