White Space in Ads - how to get more!

August 8th, 2008 by Susan Spence | Posted in Design Tips |

White space is key to good design. All ads - especially the small ones - need it.

I produce a lot of ads every month. The most import factor in making those ads work is white space which allows your eye to navigate to each key point in order of importance.

Here are some tricks to getting more white space to work with:

• Clump what little white space you have together to get one or two big chunks instead of a lot of little ones.
• Bleed photos and color bars off the edge of the ad. I see a lot of ads with a little bit of white space around a photo. By bleeding the photo (or info bar) you can get a bigger photo and then clump the white space that you saved.
• Use narrow type columns to avoid wasting white space in between lines of type.
• Avoid centering - it splits the white space in half.
• When applicable, put all the contact info in a bar at the bottom. Bleed left, bottom and right. The logo can go above it on the right bottom where people expect to see it.
• Group your info together instead of having text (and the white space that surrounds it) sprinkled all over your ad. By grouping type into a column you group your white space with it.

You’ll be surprised how much white space you can find!