What Lady Gaga Has to Teach Us About White Space

Sarah Fey, february 2019

You’ve heard the song “Shallow” many times by now. If you’re like me, you still wake up singing it in the middle of the night. Not a bad fate—it’s a great song. But what makes it an especially powerful song is, not Gaga’s bellow at the end; it’s the way Bradley Cooper uses silence in the beginning. Next time you hear it, listen to the huge gaps between his phrases in the first verse and the way he almost taunts you with the guitar, pushing apart the notes to create tension (Oh my...will she come on stage??). It is this exagerated contrast between his restraint at the beginning and her all-out assault at the end that gives the song its power.

When designing any page, be it in print or on the web, it is useful to remember how effective simple contrast like this is. We are all on strict budgets, and we all want to cram as much information at our readers in as little space as possible. But do not underestimate the power of that silence, the blank parts of the page, the “white space.” This is the frame of nothing that shines a bright light on what IS there on the page. Used well, white space can be used to lead the reader into the piece calmly and deliberately. It can be used to show clarity of thinking—calm. Lure your reader in that way and build the volume from there. Because you know darn well that if anyone—even Lady Gaga—is screaming at you all the time, you are not going to listen.