White Space Can Greatly Enhance Your Website's UX
White space is not just the empty or blank space on a web page; it's a useful tool which you can use to take your designs to great heights. Spaces between images, columns, text, graphics and other elements on a web page plus the space between text, and all space that is kept untouched, is called white space. Good designers can do terrific things with white space. Think of Google's home page and how the white space is used to highlight search, which is the reason for Google's being there.
In this article we'll see how white space can be used to improve elements on your website pages.
Makes Easy to Read: White space helps users to scan what they want to on your web. Since web users normally don't read all your text, but simply scan through it to pick up what they want to know, optimal margins and leading helps to improve comprehension. Leading refers to the ratio of the height of a line to the size of the font. In web design 150% is the popular ratio; it means if your font size is 20 pixels, then your line height must be 30 pixels. In short, adequate white space will make reading much easier.
Draws Attention: White space can be used to draw users' attention to a particular point in a design that you want them to see. This feature is brilliantly used in Apple iMac's page where the name iMac and the tagline is highlighted because of the white space surrounding it – even though a colorful and big image on the right of the screen is competing with it.
Improves Designs: Good white space can transform a design more than anything else can. A design can be made to stand out when empty space around it is increased. On the other hand, less space can ‘squeeze' the design and mar its style. Rather than stand out, it will tend to merge with the text.
Adds Sophistication: White space gives the page a feeling of luxury and sophistication. A product will appear luxurious when you make judicious use of white space. A classic example of this is Apple's website. Here the product needs very little explanation by way of text; minimal taglines are all the text you need to describe the brand. This style is also used by high end Wellbeing and health sites: very little text is used to highlight the products and services; great use of white space tells almost the entire story.
Helps to Emphasize: Some elements are more important than others on a web page. You can draw attention to these main elements by the use of white space. For this you must have as few visuals as possible close to these elements. For instance, make CTAs (calls-to-action) more prominent by surrounding them with white space.
Helps to Group: Suppose you want to group a set of items in your website page? Do you draw lines or use colors to do it? The easiest and most unobtrusive way to accomplish this is to insert some white space between the items you want to classify. It automatically creates groups and also enhances the overall effect of your site in a simple way.
Summing Up
Web designers have experienced great satisfaction after using white space for different elements on the sites they've designed. And since it pleases the client also, using white space is a win-win situation for all concerned parties. White space helps to make the web page organized, easy to read and follow and enhances the design. Since it also improves the user experience, it's something all web designers should give a thought to.
In this article we'll see how white space can be used to improve elements on your website pages.
Makes Easy to Read: White space helps users to scan what they want to on your web. Since web users normally don't read all your text, but simply scan through it to pick up what they want to know, optimal margins and leading helps to improve comprehension. Leading refers to the ratio of the height of a line to the size of the font. In web design 150% is the popular ratio; it means if your font size is 20 pixels, then your line height must be 30 pixels. In short, adequate white space will make reading much easier.
Draws Attention: White space can be used to draw users' attention to a particular point in a design that you want them to see. This feature is brilliantly used in Apple iMac's page where the name iMac and the tagline is highlighted because of the white space surrounding it – even though a colorful and big image on the right of the screen is competing with it.
Improves Designs: Good white space can transform a design more than anything else can. A design can be made to stand out when empty space around it is increased. On the other hand, less space can ‘squeeze' the design and mar its style. Rather than stand out, it will tend to merge with the text.
Adds Sophistication: White space gives the page a feeling of luxury and sophistication. A product will appear luxurious when you make judicious use of white space. A classic example of this is Apple's website. Here the product needs very little explanation by way of text; minimal taglines are all the text you need to describe the brand. This style is also used by high end Wellbeing and health sites: very little text is used to highlight the products and services; great use of white space tells almost the entire story.
Helps to Emphasize: Some elements are more important than others on a web page. You can draw attention to these main elements by the use of white space. For this you must have as few visuals as possible close to these elements. For instance, make CTAs (calls-to-action) more prominent by surrounding them with white space.
Helps to Group: Suppose you want to group a set of items in your website page? Do you draw lines or use colors to do it? The easiest and most unobtrusive way to accomplish this is to insert some white space between the items you want to classify. It automatically creates groups and also enhances the overall effect of your site in a simple way.
Summing Up
Web designers have experienced great satisfaction after using white space for different elements on the sites they've designed. And since it pleases the client also, using white space is a win-win situation for all concerned parties. White space helps to make the web page organized, easy to read and follow and enhances the design. Since it also improves the user experience, it's something all web designers should give a thought to.
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