Using margins and padding

Look at this lovely gallery. Beautiful scenes of a tropical island beach, each image nicely separated by margins/padding.

There are a lot of ways to frame a painting or photo. For a long time we’ve favored using wood frames, but as as things have changed we’ve adapted. It turns out wood doesn’t work so well online. Margins and padding can give each element its own importance. You don’t need a border to focus on an element, but you do need some separation. It gives everyone enough space to breath and we avoid things that look like this:

Please! Make it stop!

Good principles of padding and margins

Don’t over-do it, but don’t under-do it either. Make sure that you use enough margin to make the user-interface functional. People shouldn’t have to wonder what they are clicking on, so be sure to seperate elements enough.

Be sure to keep your padding and margins small enough that you are able to have fluidity across your designs. Go crazy on margins and padding and you may end up with some pretty goofy looking collapsed or mobile versions.

Think of it this way, you are trying to let acrobats perform up on stage. Sometimes you’ve got 3 performers, and it’s fine if they are there together, but you’d better make sure they have enough room, otherwise they will kick each other in the face and the show will be ruined. When you have a large full-width element that you want to take up the screen, give it some padding and give it the screen!

Just remember, give it some breathing space and keep responsiveness in mind.

In today’s competitive market environment, the body copy of your entry must lead the reader through a series of disarmingly simple thoughts.

All your supporting arguments must be communicated with simplicity and charm. And in such a way that the reader will read on. (After all, that’s a reader’s job: to read, isn’t it?) And by the time your readers have reached this point in the finished copy, you will have convinced them that you not only respect their intelligence, but you also understand their needs as consumers.

As a result of which, your entry will repay your efforts. Take your sales; simply put, they will rise. Likewise your credibility. There’s every chance your competitors will wish they’d placed this entry, not you. While your customers will have probably forgotten that your competitors even exist. Which brings us, by a somewhat circuitous route, to another small point, but one which we feel should be raised.

This is dummy copy. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. If this were real copy, it would have ended long ago, because‚ as we all know‚ no one reads body copy, and even fewer read body copy this long. But then, this is dummy copy. It is not meant to be read. Period.