For Best Results, Design with White Space

There have been countless articles written about how important it is to design with white space, so I’m not going to preach. But when I was browsing Behance for creative inspiration yesterday as I often do, I happened upon a pretty interesting exercise that I think illustrates how cluttered and overdone most designs have become.

Read the minimalist design post here. Even though it focuses mainly on product packaging design for consumer products, the take-away is applicable to any business that touches design (read: every business in existence).

Why Minimalist Design?

As you can see by the image above and the other examples in the post, by simply removing excess photos, illustrations and graphics, the resulting design is not only more eye-catching, but it also places MUCH more emphasis on the brand name. And the resulting minimalist design is also much more unique, which will add to the appeal. The simplified Nutella packaging design you see above would stand out on the shelves worlds more than the current design.

My theory is, the marketing team was subject to design “feedback” from other departments that don’t understand the power of minimalist design. I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. A clean, but bold design is presented, and after a few rounds of feedback, it’s a cluttered mess. Not good. Not good.

White Space Design: Less is More

The lesson here: resist the urge to pack your design with more than is necessary – too many words, too many images and too many design elements can clutter a good design and result in a design that simply doesn’t work. And we’re all about effective design!

Thoughts?