| White Space Is Right Space in Ads 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:
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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.
Here are some tips for increasing the power of your message using white space as a
design element:
· Divide and conquer. Once you've decided which
design elements you want to use, such as an image, headline, and text, take a blank page
the size of your ad and divide the available space.
· Put your most important message center stage.
Where will the viewer's eyes be drawn first? Is this really the most important message you
want your viewer to receive?
· Draw the viewer's eyes to secondary messages. From
the focal point, is there an easy line for the viewer's eyes to follow to the other
important parts of your message or do they have to decide where to look next?
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.
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