In drawing, one of the most fundamental lessons to master is negative space (often called white space). Negative space is the area that is around and between the subject of an image. Give attention to the negative space between your photos and decorative elements and you will put together a strong design that gives the viewer direction and focus.

Surround An Element With A Lot Of Negative Space For Eye-Catching Attention

The large amount of negative space around the title of my layout pulls your attention first.

The circular sticker with the number two immediately draws you over to the main photos. That sticker not only connects the two photos together, it also gets your notice because it crosses lines and breaks through the negative space between the two photos.

That white line directs you down to the next horizontal, then over and down again to the bottom set of photos. The other two circular stickers help you move along. This all happens so quickly and is so subtle that we are unaware that all these decorations are acting as maps and sign posts.

Why Size Matters

The larger the space between two elements, the more disconnected those elements will seem. A small amount of negative space between two items will group those items together. When assembling a layout, pay attention to the size of the space you create around and between all your photos (the margins).

On my layout the space between each of the photos is very small, so the pictures feel connected to each other as one cohesive whole.

On the other hand, within the box of four photos, we understand the top two pictures to be slightly separate from the bottom two because of the large amounts of white space on the sides (the stickers also work to group the pairs). The margin between the top and bottom photos are exactly the same as the margin between the two pairs, but if I had made that space slightly bigger, the two pairs would have felt much more separate. That is fine if you want to make a distinction between the two groupings but in my case, I wanted to give almost equal weight to each photo.

On the layout above, there is a sense that my photos and the title are in their own space, separate from the decorated borders at the top and bottom. This is because the negative space between the photos and the borders is relatively large.

Putting The Principles Into Practice

If all this seems too analytical for you, don’t feel like you need to think through all of these principles as you plan your pages. I am not this calculated when I put my layouts together. I usually work more from a feeling I want to portray. An awareness of basic principles just helps me along.

The important thing is to think about what you want (for example, is there one photo that should stand out above the rest or do you want to treat all of them as equals?) and to periodically ask yourself if what you are doing is accomplishing that. As you go, you will recall a design principle or two. With practice, these principles will come more naturally and putting together each layout will get easier.