My wife Cyndi was instrumental in the greatest gift anyone has ever given me – helping rekindle my faith.

Beyond that, she’s been the source of countless gifts in our nearly 25 years together. One gift that’s helped throughout my business career was something Cyndi said to me back in college based on her award-winning journalism, marketing, and PR experience: “White space sells.”

Although a deceptively simple phrase, it’s absolutely true. Ample white space helps:

• Set the stage to showcase and focus attention on the most important elements to communicate
• Remove unnecessary elements fighting for attention with whatever you’re advertising
• Make it easier on the viewer or reader to process and potentially better recall your primary message

Cyndi’s initial comment and its repetition have caused me to be attuned to not cluttering design elements with too much other stuff, although it’s a challenge for someone who is a natural accumulator of all kinds of things. That’s why simplicity, writing fewer words, and ways to narrow options are such frequent topics: I’m trying to reinforce the importance of literal and figurative “white space” to myself.

I love white space, really – as long as it’s on a page! If it’s outside white space as in snow, well, that’s another story!