Clutter on your desk. Clutter in your office, in your briefcase, in the glove compartment of your car. You may be able to stay focused and communicate effectively despite the clutter, but your ads won't. Avoid clutter creep in all your print materials, but especially in advertisements. Instead, use the power of white space.

Many a novice designer has tried to cram too much information or too many design elements into an ad layout. This mistake distracts your audience from understanding and absorbing your main message.

Compare these two ads:

The most important points of the ad -- to communicate the name and style of the restaurant, and to advertise the free side dish and price special, are hidden among the clutter of the ad on the left. The restaurant's tag line (and what Smokey would certainly like potential customers to remember most), "Simply the Best Texas Bar-b-Que in Wisconsin," is center stage in the ad on the right, but it is pushed to the side in the ad on the left. In the ad on the right, the message is more focused and concise, and the design uses white space -- the un-printed parts of the page -- to focus the viewer's attention.

Place each design element according to importance or impact. And remember, white space is a design element, too! So clear out the clutter, and make room for focused, powerfully designed ads.