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Improve Your E-Learning Designs Using White Space

CommunityTeam's avatar
6 years ago

Have you ever opened an e-learning course and immediately felt overwhelmed? When there’s too much information on each slide, the learner ends up spending more time trying to figure out where to look or what to click than actually learning.

As e-learning designers, we want to minimize the chances our learners will feel lost or confused so they can focus on the content. One way to do this is by using white space effectively—allowing learners to easily scan and find what they need.

Wondering what we mean by “white space”? Don’t worry. In this article, we’ll explain what white space is and how to use it to improve your e-learning designs.

What Is White Space?

White space, also known as negative space, is the empty unmarked space between textboxes, objects, characters, and shapes in design. But it doesn’t have to be white. It can be any color, pattern, or even a background image. Basically, white space is any space without any text or objects.

When you use white space effectively, you’ll improve your slide layouts. They’ll be more legible and scannable, making for a better learning experience. Sound good? Great! Keep reading to find out how it’s done.

Follow the Rule of 50/50

As a general rule, 50% of your slide layout should consist of white space. A generous amount of white space helps avoid visual clutter and gives your course content breathing room. Take a look at the examples below:

Less White Space

More White Space

 

See what a difference extra white space makes? Next time you’re designing a course, split text-heavy slides up into multiple slides with extra white space. Your learners will thank you!

Add Extra Space around Text

When you leave extra space between each character and line of text in a paragraph, it makes it easier for the learner to read it. Adjusting the kerning (the amount of space between each character) and the leading (the amount of space between each line of text) can make a dramatic difference in how easy it is to read your content.

Take a look at this side-by-side comparison:

Less White Space

More White Space

 

Which one do you find easier to read? My money’s on the one with more white space!

Use Space to Create Logical Groupings

According to the Law of Proximity, when we see objects near one another we view them as a unit. You can help learners make sense of the information presented to them by putting less space between related objects and more space between unrelated objects.

Let’s look at an example.

Equal Space Between All Objects

Space Used to Create Groupings

 

While neither of these designs looks bad, the example on the right makes it more obvious that there are 6 groups of objects. 

The Bottom Line

White space is a design element you can use to improve the learning experience and visual design of your projects. These tips will help you declutter your courses and add breathing room to your slides.

Want to learn about other ways to improve the visual design of your e-learning courses? Here are some articles to read:

Follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.

Published 6 years ago
Version 1.0
  • Thanks for sharing that essential element of visual communication Nicole. Funny how SMEs think learners will read every single bit of text on screen. They won’t! Who was it that once said, your design work is done when there is nothing left to take away?
    • NicoleLegault1's avatar
      NicoleLegault1
      Community Member
      Thanks for the comment Chris! Antoine de Saint-Exupery said "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Wise words!
  • Great reminder of what to strive for. Many times my challenge is convincing the business owner and other stakeholders to preserve the whitespace and not to see it as fresh territory to "cram more in".
    • MofidulIslam-d7's avatar
      MofidulIslam-d7
      Community Member
      Agree with you David. Using white space to keep instructional materials appealing to learners is a very important element of instructional design. But again, convincing the business owner is the biggest challenge. Few years ago, I had a supervisor, who used to worry about the wasting real estate. He would refer the white space as "real estate" and would clutter each page with as much texts as possible. We found out later that he was from IT background and was used to writing codes. Convincing the boss that writing programming codes and developing instructional materials are two different things was another challenge. - Enjoyed reading the article.
  • ReneJost's avatar
    ReneJost
    Community Member
    Very well to the point! Some slide designers don´t use illustrations but text only. Bad enough... but if they don't even use empty spaces, it's gonna be really bad.
  • Great article. So many times I see slides crammed full of stuff! Love a bit of white space to make my slides clean, crisp and clear.
  • Thank you for the validation. I constantly have to remind clients that sometime less is more!
  • Great article, Thanks for sharing, map to becoming a better E learning designer.