White space calms us, letting us “breathe”.Īs with the other user interface elements, you as a designer need to understand the role white space plays and experiment to find the right balance between it and the rest of the elements. People get frustrated when information bombards them. Instead of calling the helpline, readers will digest the troubleshooting advice. Few people read manuals for pleasure it is then crucial to hold the readers’ attention! For that, the white space is the real star of the show, working between the words and the pictures.

If you were a technical writer in charge of composing hundreds of manuals for a kitchen appliance company, you would work to find a superb balance of words and images.

On the contrary, white space is a great tool to balance design elements and better organize content to improve the visual communication experience. They think it could be used to house more information or other visual elements. Sadly, many clients and managers consider white space wasted space. Design theory promotes the use of white space for elegance and ensuring a quality user experience. White space can cause problems between designers and clients. It can be any color, texture, pattern, or even a background image. It is also the space within individual design elements, including the space between typography glyphs (readable characters).ĭespite its name, white space does not need to be white. White space is the area between design elements. Let’s see why designing the white space is so important. However, what do they all need to form that painting? They need a canvas! White space is like a canvas: it’s the background that holds the elements together in a design, enabling them to stand out. Imagine a painting these parts are the painted bits. These include typography, drawn lines, icons, images, etc. Often neglected, one of the most vital is white space (or negative space), the space found inside and surrounding the other design elements.įor a website or app, many different visual elements make up the layout. Many elements form the layout and structure of an interactive design.

However, it’s powerful enough to mean keeping people on your page – survival, in other words. It’s as underrated as silence between musical notes. We want to show you a tool so vital that it may amaze you as a designer.

White Space by G.S. Wolfe