White space impacts font legibility as well as the amount of content you may “cram” on a page and still have a good looking, easily grasped site design, so white space may be considered the most important aspect of page design.

Negative space (or white space) is often considered a great mystery, comprehended only by the “Art Elect.” That’s because white space must be experienced to be understood; and you can’t “graps” it by reading about it.

It’s quite easy to train your instinctive “right brain” to use negative space in your designs, including photography, not only page layout. So here are three further tips.

1.) Squint until the page or image you are viewing becomes a matrix of color or shaded areas. In other words ignore the detail and just learn to see the form. You’ll be able to discern which form is more successful, or “better.”

2.) Crop or print large photos, then take two “L” shaped pieces of paper such that you can move them around and “frame” various areas of the printed photo. Keep moving them around until something “pops” and you “know” that the area you have just framed is a worthy design. Use the above-referenced squint method here too.

3.) There’s a book titled “Notan” by Dorr Bothwell. It’s out of print, but you can find used copies on Amazon for 2-3 dollars. The book features a series of easily completed exercises that will train you to understand and use white space.

Search the web under all three terms, but be aware that without making some positive effort (three are mentioned above), you won’t grok the concept of white space unless you’re a “natural. Some people are “naturals,” but almost anybody can train themselves and once you do, your work will improve by at least one order of magnitude.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web is a site by Richard Rutter that is applying the concepts of Robert Bringhurst’s book The Elements of Typographic Style to concepts relevant to web designers. The site itself is elegantly simple and should be required reading for anyone designing for digital media.