You don’t know how many time we’ve heard people comment on the uniqueness of our company name and how much they love it. Especially those within our industry as they appreciate the value of white space and how it contributes to good, effective communication.
Sometimes less is more
Here are two award winning ads we created for Ricoh Canada. Both ads ran less than a full page in a busy business section of a daily newspaper, yet still commanded the attention of the reader. Used properly—either in print or web—whitespace can work in your favour by drawing the reader in. Clever headlines help too.
White space is an active element in any good design; it’s also referred to as negative space. White space is always occurring in a design from the moment you open up a blank document, the design begins white space. There are two types of white space, the undefined white space, which is what you get when you open a new document, and active white space, which occurs when an object is placed in an undefined white space.
Just to clarify a misconception, white space doesn’t mean it has to be white, because it can be any colour, whether it is black, brown or white. It’'s also up to the designer to make it an important element of design because if not used properly it can be misunderstood for wasted space.
How is white space used?
It can be used in every media of design whether it be web/graphic design, illustrations, photography, it can be used anywhere. See how it was applied to the Ricoh ads above.
In web design white space is crucial for legibility/readability. Some designers go overboard and think design is about adding but in fact, it’s about taking away. Some of the cleanest corporate sites have very limited content on the main page. Lately we have seen a lot of websites that have way too much going on—in fact you don’t know exactly where to start.
The proper use of white space and the elements that you place within that space will do two things: first it is meant to draw the reader/recipient to your ad because of the less clutter and two; it helps to direct the order in which you want the reader to take—it provides a heiarchy to the elements within the space. Again, less clutter.
I have always been a proponent and lover of white space—sometimes less is more is a credo that we all work toward—at times running into resistence with a client.