Just the other day I came across this great article written by Jerry Cao and Kamil Zieba and Matt Ellis on Fast Company about website design. As arts organizations, we sometimes feel that we need to put a lot of information on every page of our website so that people can see everything we offer.
However, we must resist that temptation and learn to love white space in order for our websites to be as effective as possible.
All good visual artists understand the importance of negative space, the empty area that draws attention to, and accentuates, the actual subject. Negative space (the artistic equivalent of a designer’s white space) is like the supporting cast whose duty is to make the star of the show stand out more by not standing out so much themselves. If you don’t think any part of your design should be intentionally blank, take a look at the World’s Worst Website Ever for an extreme example of the damage caused by too many objects competing for attention. In interaction design, white space isn’t just an aesthetic choice— it serves three essential functions.
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