Okay – so the White Space Rule doesn’t apply to outdoor marketing but what exactly IS it?
The White Space Rule is an old standard common in print advertising. Basically, if you don’t have enough white space on a page it can appear cluttered and utterly unreadable. This is why print advertisers put specific margins and uniform space on the pages – so it is easier to read and more appealing to the masses.
This isn’t the case with a billboard. Whether mobile or stationary, you can, and are encouraged to, fill up the space and have no worries about the billboard being able to be read.
Due to the massive size and the scant amount of time a reader has to process the message, white space is irrelevant. A consumer is only seeing the billboard for a very small amount of time so naturally the message is short and sweet. Due to this time constraint there is also usually only one identifier in the message. This identifier is a call-to-action for the customer. It might be your brand logo, a website url or simply a phone number. Billboard design, therefore, is very specific based on the limited time frame a consumer has to interact with it. It’s because of this that white space doesn’t matter.
A short, simple message and already non-cluttered area are easy to comprehend. It has made the need to create white space utterly useless in this context. Your billboard can have ZERO white space on it and be one of the most phenomenal works of marketing in this day and age.
So go ahead. Fill ‘er up!
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