When to say—or show—nothing

Lauding the positives of negative space
 
Graphic designers, more often than not, will wax rhapsodic about “white space.”
 
But what is it?
 
Can you use it?
 
Will it help?
 
In this article, we’ll examine what white space is, how it can work for you, and when to intentionally reject it.
 
A loose definition
 
In the graphic world, “white space” refers to area in a layout which is unpopulated by type or images. (We’ll talk about its analogs in other media momentarily.) You might be inclined to call it “dead space,” but a more appropriate moniker would be “breathing room.”
 
The thing about white space isn’t what it contains (i.e., nothing), but rather what it sets off or emphasizes. Think of an Apple TV spot. It always ends with a blank black screen, with a stark white Apple logo in the middle. Is the logo huge? Since there’s nothing else competing with it, there’s an entire screen it could occupy. But you know that that’s not the case. The logo is relatively small, taking up maybe ten percent of the screen’s real estate.
 
This is by design. Apple wants the logo to be smallish, with lots of room (“white space,” even though, in this instance, it’s black) around it, because doing so makes it look classier. If the logo were big/taking up the whole screen, it would be yelling at you; designers would say it were “horsey” (meaning annoyingly oversized).
 
An analogy
 
Here’s a way to think about white space, and why it works. Sure, in the Apple example above, the white space is like “reserved space,” holding back anything that might compete with the logo. But think of a house. Picture a pretty, two-story Victorian. Picture that house on a crowded city street, with houses on either side, pressed up against the sidewalk.
 
Now picture the house again. But this time, imagine it in the country, set back from the road a good 200 feet behind a broad green lawn. Suddenly, it’s transformed from “urban clutter” to “elegant estate.” The only difference was the setting—the off-setting—the white space.
 
Applications
 
If you think of graphical treatments of upscale logos (e.g., BMW, Lexus), they’ll always be surrounded by white space, often lots of it. Indeed, it’s become part of the tacit vocabulary not only of design, but of comprehension: When you see anything with lots of white space around it, you assume it’s elegant/expensive/ exclusive.
 
So you can make this work for you. When you add white space, you create that elegant boundary. It’s a nice touch, provided that what you want to showcase is indeed elegant. Otherwise, it’s, well, like putting lipstick on a pig.
 
Other media
 
As we’d intimated above, “white space” isn’t just for graphics. It can find its analogs in audio, video, and even writing.
 
Like this.
 
That little fragment, above, commands its own white space. It’s set off prettily; it forces you to take a separate breath, unconsciously, to read it. It can create a nice little flourish, when properly employed.
 
Ditto for audio. Here, “white space” is silence. We’re so inured these days—in movies, TV, radio, video games, podcasts—to hearing totally over-produced, ear-jamming sound, that it loses its power from its constant volume. Silence is a breather. It can create elegance. It can also provide dramatic underpinning, such as suspense or a quiet interlude that you’d like to interrupt with a new and shocking sound.
 
Since video is more fluid, “white space” can take on more meanings. It can be a static shot (imagine a vast landscape) that’s held on screen for a long time without the frenetic cutting that’s so expected these days. It could be literal white space; think of the final scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
 
The important thing for you to recognize is that white space is a tool in your kit, regardless of medium. And—bonus—it’s free. You don’t need a big budget to add white space to something you’re creating, but doing so may well impart a richer feel to the finished product.
 
When to reject it
 
As we’d noted above, white space traditionally connotes elegance, serenity, and order. And there are perfectly valid times to employ anything but. Here, you can use the opposite rules to your advantage. If you want something that’s frenetic and barely contained and bursting with nervous energy that feels like it’s about to explode at any minute no matter what you do, avoid white space. Fill in every gap—and in case you didn’t notice it, we employed that exact technique, verbally, in the previous sentence. We purposely opted for the run-on that unconsciously runs you out of breath as you read it.
 
Do you have any favorite examples of white space in action, ingeniously employed? Share them with us. We’d love to see them.

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