White Space.

I have decided to periodically write about design under the title "White Space." Here’s my first entry, based on inspiration provided by the New York Times Magazine.

I love this spread. I think that formally, it’s beautiful. The contrast and balance are exquisite, the typography delicious, and the white space very well-thought out. This spread is the catalyst for my recent thinking on white space, what it is, and how exactly its nothingness lends to the overall somethingness of its container.

It also makes me think about white space in terms of other design forms, mainly architecture, urban planning, and product design. What is white space in each of these contexts? How does it exist and what does it mean for the product or space that it modifies? I’m thinking about this a lot lately.

For example, white space in a graphic design context (as pictured here) or an architectural one is fairly straight-forward and easy to recognize. Whether on a piece of paper or in a building, white space is that element devoid of anything that makes room for, thereby enhancing and giving stage to, the element(s) of something. Will and I talk a lot about what we want in a house when we build one someday and one of the most important things to me is white space. I want lots of white space in my house, lots of nothing spaces that are quiet and allow me to pause and think when I need to, but that ultimately guide me toward the something, e.g., the function and substance of the structure that is designed to help me live my life. Places of dense activity, form, and function that are balanced, like this page, by fields of nothing. Which is kind of misleading to refer to white space as "nothing". Because due to the mere function it serves, its purpose is the opposite of nothing, really.

But what about white space in product design? How is that manifest? Does white space exist in the design of a shoe or a table or a lamp? Does it exist in interaction design? If so, how?