A List Apart Comments for Article: Whitespace

Untitled

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 06:54:30 GMT

Excellent article on an often overlooked topic!

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Economist

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 07:18:13 GMT

Just a heads-up: I believe you meant *economist.com* instead of theeconomist.com (: The former goes to the newspaper.

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Nothing

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:27:30 GMT

It's interesting to read an article about nothing - nothing as the absence of content. Yet I just had an intuitive feeling that there must be more space here or there, but after reading the article the why and how becomes more clear to me.

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Thank you

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:47:21 GMT

Finally, an excellent article that sums up what we have been trying to tell clients for years. Unfortunately we are somewhat limited with web tools (low resolutions, limited font selection, etc.). This should not, however, be used as an excuse to discount the amount of time we spend on tweaking whitespace; on the contrary, we need to concentrate more and attempt to compensate through other means. Where The Economist was able to make some subtle font changes to lighten the heavy feel of the paper; with the web we would need to look at other changes we could make, like adjusting margins and increasing the general amount of macro whitespace to try and achieve the same goal.

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Untitled

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:09:24 GMT

While The Economist refers to itself as a "newspaper", it is misleading in this context given the published form is that of a magazine.

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Appreciated

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:35:52 GMT

Great article, thanks.

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Untitled

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 13:46:15 GMT

Great article, countless are the times when you _feel_ something and find someone who can put clear words on it to explain. Another suggested author in the field is Robert Bringhurst’s book "The Elements of Typographic Style":http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881791326 and how it can be "applied to the web":http://www.webtypography.net/. BTW, I do like the ??nothing?? idea! As "someone already outlined":http://www.amazon.com/Debt-Pleasure-Novel-John-Lanchester/dp/0312420366 that the ultimate -- and only -- art is the absence of life.

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Helping to see the light! (and the white)

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:29:54 GMT

Many thanks Mark for a fantastic read. This article will really help me over the next few projects. I can also see this article acting as a back-up to my white space beliefs - pointing non-believers in the direction of this article should shut them up for a bit!

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Great

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:41:34 GMT

A great article! Handy when yet another client wants his whole brochure cramped in a small add. I will just let them read this =)

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Imagine architecture without space...

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:51:53 GMT

Mark and I have discussed space - white or otherwise - a number of times. Normally while complaining about clients' perception of space as lack of design. The way I tend to approach this comment is to make parallels to architecture. No architect thinks just about the walls, floor and ceiling of a room but rather the space - open, closed, joined. Space in a building channels your experience, overwhelms or astounds you, enwraps you and serves you. I just wish more people understood that space in graphic design is the same - on screen or on the page. We construct our understanding of what is there by the 'nothing' that surrounds it.

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ps.

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:56:46 GMT

Ruder, Spiekermann, Bringhurst... Good to see the work of some quality typographers getting metions. Good job Mark, nice article.

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Awesome article

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:33:10 GMT

Whitespace seems to be an issue I run into a lot of people, some want way too much and others want almost none. It is hard to talk to people about the balance of whitespace.

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Thanks Mark!

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:49:28 GMT

Great article. I love reading your essays, particularly on your site. I am decidedly inexperienced myself when it comes to typographical design, but when encoding a website's CSS I find that I spend more time playing with whitespace than anything else.

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Excellent analysis!

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 16:56:47 GMT

Yep! A great discussion on this oft-overlooked topic!

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Enjoyable exposition on rare topic

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:03:45 GMT

Thanks for the enjoyable read, especially the graphical section on cheap and luxury advertising. I hasten to question why people advertise in the cheap fashion at all; I find it strange that "direct-mail packages need to appear down-market to work" although I see that the average proletarian might prefer a lower-market advert with price being more important than quality. Coming from a purely mathematical background the actual task of designing a good-looking website is quite a time consuming process. It is amazing how a few changes in how paragraph text is formatted can increase the readability and popularity of a specific page. A List Apart actually has one of my favourite designs as it is appealing and inherently usable. I have found that using the Golden Section and symmetry in my work to calculate white-space (relative to box size) increases the usability and aesthetic appeal of an application/website.

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Untitled

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:22:55 GMT

Quoting Michael Clark: "I have found that using the Golden Section and symmetry in my work to calculate white-space (relative to box size) increases the usability and aesthetic appeal of an application/website." It's curious how the theme of grids and natural proportions (Fibonacci, Golden Section) go hand in hand. Andy Clark in Transcending CSS, discusses the same subjects, applying margins and paddings as gutters (similar to print layouts) and estimates the proportion of the content blocks on a ratio of aprox. 1.62.

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Re: The Economist

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:13:36 GMT

bq. While The Economist refers to itself as a “newspaper”, it is misleading in this context given the published form is that of a magazine. Though we've come to think of the words "magazine" and "newspaper" as referring to the physical form of a periodical publication, the terms can also describe a publication's _content_, rather than its format. (Thus _The Economist_'s own "defense":http://economist.com/help/DisplayHelp.cfm?folder=663377#About_The_Economist of their description.) As webby folk, we're hip to the distinction between presentation and content -- and as a "web magazine," we're particularly invested in the notion that it's what's inside that matters. :) (Thanks to Jason H. for the heads-up re: our URL goof.)

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More! More!

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 04:13:54 GMT

Great article and I am really full of hope to see more articles about typography from you. People should be educated. So far typography is the weakest place of major amount of web sites. Designers treat text as "Lorem ipsum" and coders don't know typography, so at the end nobody cares about text. Thank you, Mark, for touching very important, yet forgotten topic.

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Thank you, in the name of..

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 09:14:24 GMT

.. my younger brother, who is aspiring to become a graphical designer himself and take a 2-year study for it. For some reason he can't seem to grasp the concept of "padding" in his website designs. You know, all his texts are cramped to the border of the window, design elements, each other, etc. I'll definitely show him this article. Thanks a bunch!

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No excuse

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:00:17 GMT

bq. Unfortunately we are somewhat limited with web tools (low resolutions, limited font selection, etc.) The great advantage that the web has over printed media is that space is cheap ... so cheap it's free! If you want to print a document with white space, you have to either compromise by reducing the size of the text, or by adding more pages (at a cost!) ... on the web, you can add white space with impunity, and the only cost is that a reader has to scroll that fraction further.

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Untitled

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:12:21 GMT

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.

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Re: No Excuse

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:13:12 GMT

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.

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Singing to the Choir

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:22:03 GMT

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.

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Down market

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:19:41 GMT

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?

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Thank you for the argument that won my boss over !

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:34:45 GMT

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

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Re: Thank you for the argument that won my boss over !

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:24:17 GMT

Thank you for sharing. You made our day.

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I knew it !

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 19:19:23 GMT

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._

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Doing Down market

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:52:11 GMT

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.

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Excellent

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:46:37 GMT

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

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I Concur

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:46:10 GMT

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!

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I Concur

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:46:36 GMT

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Great article

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:12:38 GMT

We all needed this article, as whitespace is often even a matter of conflict with clients as they never want any space in their design to be "wasted". Some of them should read this. Excellent!

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Really intersting

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 20:07:12 GMT

This is a really interesting article, Mark. I was quite interested in your comment that direct mailings actually NEED to look downmarket.

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Nice one!

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:17:20 GMT

We all need some space, don't we?

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Untitled

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:05:03 GMT

I enjoyed this article. I became aware of just how important whitespace can be when I began maintaining a brand standards website for a Fortune 500 Company. They have very strict rules governing whitespace in their print media and websites, and I have seen how much of a design impact whitespace can have.

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Proof-read, proof-read, proof-read!

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 09:04:12 GMT

An extremely useful article, all the better for using great examples. Two things jarred me though, and thus illustrated another great impediment to good web pages: (1) The sentence right at the beginning "But for just about everything else, my client couldn’t have been further than the truth." -- should be "from the truth". This tripped up my little brain, and stopped the flow for quite a few seconds. (2) Mark -- who is from the UK -- has used the American spelling "practice" for the verb [in "Practice, Practice, Practice"]. Fair enough, since this is an American site. But as a fairly literate British person, this not only tripped me up, but upset me: "not only is he using it wrongly, he's promoting mis-use by others [from the UK]" is the refrain at the back of my mind. All of which means to say: even the best writing coupled with the best design, can be swept off-course -- not to say torpedoed completely -- if it's not proof-read well. This is best done by a close colleague (because the author will never pick up all the errors and all the typos, after reading through his/her own text more than a couple of times). Thanks again: great article.

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It's a good reminder

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:55:39 GMT

I've been working on a redesign for my website, and one of the main issues i've encountered is balancing the content with whitespace. I've changed the default font color to be lighter, opened up some margins and the header, and generally left the site out in the breeze to "fluff" a bit.... The results have been great, and I look forward to the grand opening. As others have posted, I have found the book The Elements of Typographic Design to be invaluable in understanding type not only based on it's character, but on it's background historically. Thanks for the great article.

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Good Article

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 13:40:35 GMT

The article is quite good. I think it was a good choice to discuss this topic "whitespace". I have never seen an article about it so far. But it's obviously an important factor to consider when you write a text. The right space between line increases the readability of a text a lot.

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First Timer

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:47:15 GMT

Never even heard of Whitespace before reading your article but am glad I know about it now and how to use it effectively thanks to the great article your written.

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Untitled

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:58:02 GMT

aptly put, wonderfully explained! thanks

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re: Proof-read, proof-read, proof-read!

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:00:02 GMT

bq. “But for just about everything else, my client couldn’t have been further than the truth.”—should be “from the truth”. Thank you, John, for noting this error. The second "error," however, is _not_ an error, as you partly admit above. We're a US publication, and our house style follows US conventions, as you may see in our style guide. I should also mention that at least three people on the staff proof each ALA article, in addition to the author, so while we do miss mistakes from time to time, your scolding of the author is inappropriately directed. It's entirely our fault.

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Great

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 06:59:49 GMT

A excellent article, very useful.

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Good Reference

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 02:57:42 GMT

This is very helpful! It'll greatly improve my ability to try to explain this stuff to clients.

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Great Illustrations of White Space

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:40:28 GMT

This is a subject I am always talking to students about in my desktop publishing, yearbook, and Web design courses. I plan on having them read your article to reinforce my message. Also the illustrations will be great as a visual representation on the importance of white space. Thank you!

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Another good read

Thu, 24 May 2007 12:33:05 GMT

I'm a little late finding this article but found it very interesting. I was especially surprised to find that people actively want their designs to look cheap. Up until now, I've always tried to make things look as 'luxurious' as possible. Thinking about it, it makes sense - if your main sales pitch is that your product's low cost, you want people to immediately think of it as such. I'm sure I'll be able to use this insight in the future. Thanks for a great article.

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Designers vs. clients

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:09:31 GMT

I've found that, while some advertisers recognize that white space can be a good thing, and others can be convinced, the majority see that whiteness merely as wasted money. Perhaps this article can help convince a few of the more stubborn ones...

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Excellent Article

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:23:29 GMT

This is a topic that has been not talked about as much as it is needed. Great Job.

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Untitled

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:32:58 GMT

Follow the link to find out the article's Russian version: http://makskomaju.wordpress.com/2007/07/15/znachenie-vozduha-dlya-vospriyatiya/

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Nice write up

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:15:43 GMT

Great article. As one commenter said, whitespace is not often discussed yet is very important and can make things look bad when there is too much or not enough of it. Cheers Beth.

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Untitled

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 06:22:22 GMT

A excellent article, very useful.

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Not always the Case

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:34:29 GMT

A lovely little article which reminds me of the first book I read on print and design way back in the 1980s – the Designer's Handbook. Whilst your examples are aesthetically pleasing sometimes the guidelines are cast away and dictated by the product and the audience, the desire for a masculine as apposed to a feminine approach. Two campaigns I've been involved in illustrated this very well, selling car insurance to the elderly and builders merchants advertising. Neither were particularly cheap, both were very legible and yet flew in the face of good design, layout and spacial awareness. In response to the points of Direct Marketing one has to consider the short timescale given before it makes it journey to the bin/trashcan. Get the message across asap! But it doesn't necessarily mean cheap as many gold credit card campaigns will testify to.

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Untitled

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:20:30 GMT

Wow, it is a great and very informative article, thanks dude.

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Awesome article

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:45:02 GMT

I'm printing this out to post in our office. Great examples and great points. Thank you.

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Less is more - choose wisely

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:20:32 GMT

Great and informative article. I am a developer at a data based marketing firm whose bulk business comes from our in-house PURl application. We run small to large campagins with personalized cards and landing pages, and our staff is often in charge of designing the cards and landing pages for our clients. Our response rates from split testing with clients reluctant to go a new, cleaner design route only underline the efficacy of the approach...less is more. Everything is an ROI decision in direct mail - the message can easily get lost under a pile of lukewarm incentives and "waterbed warehouse clearance sale" type zany graphics...the flashing gifs of the print world. Our stuff won't win design awards, but it sure performs. It all comes down to clear message and good data. We have 4 seconds (a general figure, I would have to find my source again to confirm) to grab attention and make an impression with a web page - we have 1.5 seconds with print, and people tend to read only 1 in 8 words when they skim. The message is clear: choose wisely. Your site is gorgeous and appears to be the representative of the direction web is going. Keep it up.

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Astonishing!

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:35:11 GMT

It's incredibly useful, I knew how to use whitespace for the layout, but now I truly understand it :O . Thank you!

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Brilliant

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:11:59 GMT

This article helped convince our clients to be more open minded, thanks so much. Whitespace is the essence of design.

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very usefull cheers

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:59:23 GMT

you forget to realise the importance of space in a design when clients are making you use any free space to shove a banner ad in.

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