Empty Space is not Wasted Space

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of dense Web sites. You know, three columns jammed with stock quotes, recent news, ads, highlights, customer login boxes, sale-of-the-day. The clutter in these sites drives me mad. It’s like a pack rat was turned loose on the Web, armed with everything that could possibly go on a Home Page. (For many bad examples and an occasional good laugh, see Web Sites That Suck).

But when a client sends me several of these jumbled messes as examples of what-are-you-looking-for-in-a-site, I get nervous.  ‘Cause I like clean, open Web pages, even if it means that something doesn’t get to go on the Home Page. And since I like clean, open Web sites, I design them that way. But then there’s the client: well, let’s just put the news crawl right… there. In that space there.

We can’t because it’s there for a reason. Remember, the Home Page is about branding as well as information. Put too much information on the page and you lose the branding. Empty space helps break up the dense blocks of stuff that you insisted we jam onto the page. Like taking a deep breath in the middle of a long sentence, white space gives our eyes a break as we’re scanning the page. Users need this.