Discuss: Whitespace

by Mark Boulton

21 Untitled

What a useful and informative article! There are a lot of websites out there that can use this information to increase the quality of their site.

posted at 05:12 pm on January 10, 2007 by Tom W.

22

Steven. In my experience, adding more whitespace in print is not an issue of production values (print, pages and such), but much more of a conscious brand decision. In my early example, I spoke about a client who wanted to fill all available whitespace. Initially, I thought his motives were because he was paying for it. Now, given that direct mail generally appears more down-market, I’m not so sure that was the case.

So, on the web, just because we can add whitespace, should we? I guess I’m saying that these decisions should be a part of a rationalised design process so the cost to the user is potentially much more than scrolling.

posted at 06:13 pm on January 10, 2007 by Mark Boulton

23 Singing to the Choir

Sadly, it’s too late to educate most clients about white space after they’ve spent a lifetime NOT worrying about how design people feel about white space. Most successful smaller clients have prepared successful material that worked without white space, so it’s a tough sell. The trick is to find clients that like the way YOU design things.

posted at 08:22 pm on January 10, 2007 by Stephen Hall

24 Down market

Call me ignorant, but I was unfamiliar with the term ‘down-market’ until the Brand Positioning section. Out of curiosity, why do direct-market mailings do better with a down-market approach?

posted at 11:19 pm on January 10, 2007 by Brian LePore

25 Thank you for the argument that won my boss over !

For my day job I work as Cellar Door Manager for a winery, and the Boss (an ex-lawyer) asked me to redesign his website & do all the posters, winelists etc that we use in the Cellar Door (everything he has done is jam packed – center everything, ALL CAPS, lots of exclamation marks & horribly inconsistent( 4 different versions of our ‘tag’ etc) & I find I am constantly fighting the battle for more whitespace.

I printed this article & gave it him & he was most impressed with the grapical example, and as he wishes to be more upmarket, I have my new marching orders & am now happily ripping out unneccessary elements, adding whitespace – although he hasn’t yet grasped the fact that whitespace is not always ‘white’ – just devoid of text & gimracks

posted at 12:34 am on January 11, 2007 by Kim Mihaly

26

Thank you for sharing. You made our day.

posted at 02:24 pm on January 11, 2007 by Jeffrey Zeldman

27 I knew it !

Thanks a lot for writing this !

Months ago i was making the same constatation (even the smaller space between letters is changing the way we feel a page or a graphic), but i never took the time to go further and to precisely understand / explain it, which could have been helpful.

You did it, thanks !

P.S : This article allowed me to discover this blog I definitly appreciate, thanks for it too.

posted at 10:19 pm on January 11, 2007 by Dagobert Renouf

28 Doing Down market

Brian LePore asked

>Call me ignorant, but I was unfamiliar with the term ‘down-market’ until the Brand Positioning section. Out of curiosity, why do direct-market mailings do better with a down-market approach?

I wondered about this too until I spent time with my step father, (he married my mom when I was 32) who has spent much of his life selling remainders to people who run discount stores and flea markets. He’s been quite successful at it and loves to share his knowledge.

There is a market that considers elegant to be snobbish. You don’t try Cartier marketing in K-Mart. Donald’s newsletters and mass market mailings are plainly ugly but very effective.

His advice is to know your market. True bargain hunters avoid anything that looks expensive like the plague. Highly readable text with just so spacing looks expensive. Expensive equals elitist, snobby, better-than-thou to a fairly large market segment. Just as fine china and crystal ware are out of place in a fish and chips or burger joint, so is elegant typography to a bargain basement, budget buyer. Look at some of the home pages of successful Ebay sellers. Most are butt ugly with horrible type, colors, white space and so on, but they work for their buyers.

posted at 07:52 am on January 12, 2007 by michael mckee

29 Excellent

Practical, useful knowledge applied to real-world examples in an interesting way. For me that’s what ALA is all about. Great article.

posted at 01:46 pm on January 12, 2007 by Loughlin McSweeney

30 I Concur

I must agree with the “Nothing” comment. It’s good to have some black and white support my stance for more or less white. And, even having intelligent terms for what and how the “negative” space is actually “positive” for design.

Most excellent article!

posted at 07:46 pm on January 12, 2007 by Lisa Gilliard