Many designers, and many clients too, believe that graphic design should be kept to the bare minimum. They think “less is more” and that minimalism is nothing but religion.
While it is true that there are historical, practical, and design-related reasons for choosing this approach, and while empty space certainly has a place in graphic design, it is important to recognize that it is not enough. Not to him alone.
Do not trust people who, under the pretext of following the “Japanese style” or “Swiss school”, create naked, simple and soulless products. The extreme minimalism pursued by some designers may have made graphic design more refined, conceptual, and functional, but it also created an easy, quick, and repetitive approach that people see as a shortcut to a winning design.
A design by Josef Müller-Brackman, one of the founders of the so-called Swiss or international graphic style.
To understand the use of empty space, we must first examine the history of graphic design and briefly retrace the various key stages in its evolution, to see why a certain type of design continues to be successful with consumers. Professionals.

The 20th century: graphic design embraces technology

It all arguably started at the turn of the 20th century, when graphic design transformed from something limited to typography and craftsmanship to a more complex industrial process; the volume of work done by hand has decreased considerably, in favor of mechanical and more rational production.
It was the 1920s, the era of the Bauhaus in Weimar, El Lissitsky and Russian Constructivism, and Japanese minimalism: graphic design was becoming informative and functional, rebelling against naturalism and embracing abstract art and the new century of technology.
Empty space was needed to balance or bring out geometric shapes, vivid colors, and artwork consisting mostly of characters.
Large blocks of solid color were added to pages and posters to demonstrate the new capabilities of modern printing technology.
And overly ‘loaded’ designs became synonymous with folklore and naturalism, and were seen to reflect a naivety that was shunned by those who saw their mission as using graphic design to address a new world. And spark a revolution.
But ultimately each “regime” reduced graphic design to a simple, rhetorical, almost infantile, folkloric vision, while true graphic design remained limited to industry and certain cultural and editorial environments. Empty space has become almost an elite choice, austere and unmoving.

Industrial design and modernism

The empty space has not disappeared: Swiss design, Massimo Vignola, the explosion of industrial product design, and daring design studios and rebellious creatives like Bruno Mundari have adapted it to countless different contexts and have succeeded in exploiting its full potential.
The graphic design suffered however, and often lost its clarity, became too arid and ended up being tied to the use of Helvetica font and restrictive primary color palettes, abandoning the desire for experimentation and the risk that other designers around the world continued to cultivate with abandon. Many logo designing companies appreciated this type of graphic design because it seemed to reflect modernism, design, and technological innovation, far from nature and the world of the 19th century.

Empty space like a cliché: minimalism is becoming trendy

Over time the situation changed and once revolutionary graphic design based on empty space became an oft-repeated cliché , an approach to graphic design easy to replicate and suitable for all occasions, taught in schools and copied. To excess, crushing any creative impulse with functionality. It has also become the pretext for countless graphic design games to share online, based on an extreme concept of minimalism, where the goal is to say everything in one piece, challenging people to recognize the most enigmatic references to a particular subject (film, book, philosophical doctrine, etc.)

Conscious use of “empty space” to ensure calm and clarity

Away from these clichés, designers continued to use empty space to facilitate communication , as shown by the wide variety of different styles and the cross-pollination of contemporary graphic design (I recommend reading the free e-book Geographies of Graphic Design for familiarize yourself with the different styles) in which the vacuum is used for countless different purposes: for clarity and functionality or for elegance; for austerity or for the game; to highlight some elements or to create a feeling of alienation.
You could say that empty space in graphic design and other forms of visual communication is more popular than ever, due to its ability to soothe the eyes, relax the mind, and bring clarity. In a hyper-connected world, where one can learn and share anything and everything, the empty space in graphic design helps to capture the viewer’s attention , to communicate information clearly, to encourage customers to buy with confidence and make yourself understood by providing as little information as possible.
In recent years, many designers have advised doing little, but good or even very good: take care of every detail and create one interesting element for every product. Contemporary graphic design, even when overdone, pop-inspired and full of different elements, may have learned a lesson in the precision and simplicity of empty space, and when it is right. Designed, it can retain a natural feeling without being naturalistic.
Otherwise, you risk giving viewers the impression that they have just stepped into a soulless 3D computer model in an empty room…