Unless you are a talented artist or graphic designer I can pretty much guarantee that both your site and your posts could use a little extra white space. I know this because 99% of ALL sites could benefit from more white space. White space is simply the empty space on your site. It improves legibility, creates a sense of elegance, and brings balance to your site design.
More importantly, white space entices readers to read. And without readers your blog is just a fancy diary.
Why Blogs Don’t Have Enough White Space
It is almost impossible to maintain a good balance of white space on a blog because many competing priorities are working against you. Readers don’t always look at what is below the fold (or not immediately visible on their computer screen) so you have to squish everything up towards the top to make sure it get’s noticed. There are many important, fun, and useful things to put in your sidebar. So it’s understandable that we pack it so tight it looks like luggage on the way home from a big vacation. Most of us barely have enough time to write posts much less to edit and format them after the fact.
But luckily creating white space doesn’t have to be a time-consuming chore.
Quick Ways to Create White Space on Your Blog
- Break up posts with headlines (H1, H2, and H3 tags).
- Edit before you publish. Draft #2 should be at least 20% shorter than draft #1.
- Mix up paragraph sizes. Follow a chunky paragraph with a single sentence paragraph. Or even a single word.
- Format your content. Use shortcodes (if your theme supports them) or use the TinyMCE Advanced plugin on any WP blog.
- Keep the sidebar lean – if it doesn’t HAVE to be there, take it out.
- Use images in your posts.
Great Blogs With White Space
Marian Librarian is an excellent resource on social media and is also a great example of a clean design with lots of white space. The color scheme is subdued, there is a lot of open space in her design, and she breaks up her content with images, headings, and bullets.
This is not that blog is a personal favorite and an excellent example of a minimalist design. What is missing from the top of the page? Navigation. Not needed so it’s not there.
Another hysterical and brilliant minimal blog is xkcd which is almost entirely white space with a clever navigation scheme modeled on a tape player (for those of you old enough to know what that is).
But to be clear white space doesn’t equal blank. Smashing magazine is a very busy site loaded with advertising and navigation and yet it works because of very careful attention to spacing and proportion. However since you and I don’t have the design team on hand that they do, managing a site this full while maintaining white space would be challenging (ie. don’t try this at home).
Ready to get started clearing out the clutter of your website? We all need to do this now and then. Like the vegetable crisper, we forget what we’ve put in there and some of it isn’t edible anymore. Take a few minutes to look at your site or a recent post and pick one thing that doesn’t need to be there anymore.
One.
There. Doesn’t that feel better?
Got any other ideas about how to easily create white space in on a site or within a post?
Okay here’s the thing. You all are posting such great advice but you’re also adding to my list of blogs that I want to read on a regular basis, thus making it increasingly more difficult for me to do the thing that I do that makes me want to read *this* blog, which is to say, blog. If I keep reading all these great examples, then it’s going to be harder and harder for me to write myself b/c I’ll just re-realize how crowded the interwebs are with great writing.
Not sure I should thank you or delete your bookmark in my browser.
Okay, yeah, I’ll rise above my own pettiness. Thank you.
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Bookmark!
Sometimes it does feel like an effort in futility. However the thing to remember is that although there are a billion great blogs, there are also a billion potential readers out there. And personally I believe the key is to make sure you aren’t giving those readers a reason to NOT read your blog. You know what I’m talking about right? That blog you find that is so cluttered with what have you that you just instantly click away? You just don’t want to be THAT blog…
Hello there Alexis I liked your informative article on Embracing White Space. This blog has some extremely useful stuff on it! Thank you for helping me!
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