The Value of White Space

One cornerstone of layout design that can be hard for many clients to understand is white space.

In graphic design terms, white space refers to space in a layout without content — words or images.

One of my favorite longtime clients was a technical expert who knew she needed help with writing and design. She respected our expertise, loved our work and was a genuine pleasure to work with. Early on, we gave her initial concepts for a wellness guide and she was enthusiastic — approving it quickly. It was all good.

Then we went to layout with actual copy.

My clean, crisp layouts designed to direct the eye deftly with color and images came back covered in comments to add paragraph upon technical paragraph to fill up “all that extra space”. You see, my favorite client was not only very invested in her subject matter and its importance, but she was also cost-conscious. Any white space felt like a waste of money and a missed opportunity to tell the audience ever more details. She saw it as a mistake. Her additions resulted in an packed page that would overwhelm even the most patient reader.

I’ve dealt with this a lot.

To be fair, its hard to value something you don’t actually see, or more accurately, don’t perceive. And I get it: their content is important to them and they want the audience to get all the value they can get. To the average person, open space is wasted space. But we know the secret of space. As a designer, it is really satisfying when I can open someone’s eyes to an aspect of design they aren’t aware of.

So I explained to her why white space is important — not only to balance the page, but to give the eye a minute to rest while brain processed the words it had just read. It’s an opportunity to take a breath, instead of being suffocated by words. I even explained that white space can imply modernity and higher quality, whereas packed pages imply archaic, boring text books that no one wants to read. She was suspicious, and it took a good deal of convincing, but eventually she trusted us and let the writers edited down things. Layout was always a compromise with her, but we worked it out.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about white space from a bigger picture perspective.

The world seems to be demanding more productivity and speed from everyone. Our media streams are overflowing with messages encouraging us do, be and achieve ever more. Global conflicts and news make us anxious. Its overwhelming. No wonder we’re exhausted as a society.

A bit of mental and even physical white space to rest and recharge our systems might give us all a bit of breathing room. Taking a real day off, empty time with no screens or agenda really does help me to clear my mind, and somehow things don’t feel as heavy afterward. We work it out.