Comments on: Why whitespace matters

By: Sean McGee

Sean McGee — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:48:00 +0000

I think you mean ENGLISH spelling of the word. ;) I always find it hilarious when Americans try to correct Brits on what is “proper” in English.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:37:00 +0000

That is the UK spelling of the word :)

By: Paul Boag

Paul Boag — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:37:00 +0000

That is the UK spelling of the word :)

By: Mob

Mob — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:32:00 +0000

Thanks for this article, the space (whitespace) in design it’s an helpful tool.

And I say “tool” because it solves a problem, which is to avoid visual congestion on the reader. Visual congestion determines whether the message is delivered clearly or not.

I agree to all of this article.

Although I would like to mention a small misspellings:

In “The folds” you say “organisation” and I wonder what you mean by that, since so I think that word is spelled with “Z”. Organization.

Many Greetings

By: Ralph

Ralph — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 16:24:25 +0000

I like such of your kind of summaries. Your article help to improve the usabillity of websites. This way is long and hard, but on the end of this way is the - success ;)

By: Nathaniel

Nathaniel — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 02:22:16 +0000

True, true and true. But there are people out there that totally believe that every negative space should be filled! They call it wasted space! They would want to compact everything as much as they can. If you haven't guessed I am dealing with them right now.

How do I convince them otherwise? What would change their way of thinking? It seems they are convinced in spite of their own phycology. It's seems a study that big conclusion is "Whitespace sells more!" would be the silver bullet.

My awesome boss (definitely for whitespace) recently shared a study.

It found envelopes with handwritten addresses perform the best, next best printed directly on the envelope, next printed on a sticker and dead last plastic window. We were using the sticker and plastic window. After that we hand wrote or printed right on it. It was wonderful!

We need data like that for whitespace!

By: Michael Kramer

Michael Kramer — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 15:35:18 +0000

Great content! We have a large traditional Windows client application and see the same problems. Whenever we add a tab page or move to a larger screen size, end users request more data items and more buttons. No data seems obsolete.

It is a hard struggle to create an exciting user experience especially when UI design efforts seem to focus on adding content instead of adding value.

By: Will

Will — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:30:15 +0000

Great article Paul. I will be passing this link on to many clients I tell you! :)

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:24:27 +0000

Maybe he meant to hold shift and say "a )*!% user".

By: Paul Boag

Paul Boag — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 11:17:06 +0000

Good question Joshua. Nothing springs to mind off the top of my head, however I would say whitespace is just as important on a data heavy web application as it is on an informational site. Tabular data can be extremely hard to read if there is insufficient having between columns and rows.