White Space a Red-Hot Element in Web Design

Posted by chris | Filed under Featured, Opinion, Web Design

Okay, so maybe the title is a bit cheesy. However, white space is undeniably important when designing a Website. When I think about cluttered Websites with little white space, newspaper sites immediately come to mind. My eyes don’t know where to focus, and it’s hard to find what I’m looking for quickly. These sites don’t necessarily fall into the norm, since their purpose is a bit different than a small business’ site would be, for instance. An organization or business site should be professional, aesthetically pleasing, clean, and essentially do what it’s meant to do- provide information to your audience. I found and referenced some tips that are helpful to keep in mind as you review your company’s Website or prepare to have one created:
  • “White space” is coined as such because it is the space between different elements on printed pieces or on Websites.
  • The key is to achieve an effective amount of white space and to keep it consistent. Make sure your text isn’t too crunched together so that it’s hard to read, but that it isn’t so spread out that it becomes disconnected either.
  • Making sure you have enough white space doesn’t mean that you have to cut your content or make your page look empty. It simply means keeping your margins consistent and somewhere in the middle between too spread out and too congested.
  • A way to break up longer sections of text is to add headings. It does wonders to get your audience to read more and makes your site look more organized.
  • Just as with all of the text elements on your page that need to have a consistent amount of white space in between, your images should reflect that as well. Text should not run into the photo, and it’s a good idea to add a short caption describing the photo when applicable.
It may not be the most interesting part of designing a Website, but white space is just as important as content development, design, and functionality. For more details about white space and examples of sites, please refer to the full article.

Permalink | January 12th, 2009

One Response to “White Space a Red-Hot Element in Web Design”

  1. darren Says:
    January 13th, 2009 at 11:08 am

    I am SO happy you wrote this blog post! This is something that is hard to convey, and so many people just do not seem to understand. It is not only advisable, but (dare I say it) critical to good design to best utilize whitespace!

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