Got told my margins were a mess by a senior designer at a meetup last week

I was at a local design meetup in Austin showing my portfolio. A senior designer looked at my book layout and said 'your margins are choking your content, give it room to breathe.' She showed me how she uses a 12 column grid with 20px gutters for everything. I went home and rebuilt my whole portfolio site that weekend using that system. Now my layouts just feel cleaner and less cluttered. Does anyone else have a simple tip like that which totally changed your work?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse9886d ago

1998 I was in a bookstore flipping through a zine this punk kid made and every page had this huge white border around the text like a picture frame. I asked him why and he said "because words need a fence to play in." That stuck with me more than any grid system ever did. Your senior designer was right about breathing room but for me it's not always about strict columns and gutters. Sometimes it's just about giving the eye a place to rest before the next thing hits it. That kid's zine looked raw as hell but I still remember how easy it was to read because of all that empty space.

hannah3855d ago

Man, that reminds me. A buddy of mine once made a flyer for a basement show that was just a single word in the middle of a blank 8.5x11 sheet and people called it lazy. But @jesse988, thirty people showed up and said they actually read it for once.