Why do developers ignore alignment and padding?
Imagine you walk into a room and there is clutter everywhere, things all over the floor, the walls are covered with random artwork hung at every height imaginable. You would start feeling uncomfortable and overloaded very quickly. Yet we do this to our users every day by not paying attention to the very basics.
There are two excessively simple concepts that every developer needs to grasp: alignment, and padding. Alignment means reducing clutter by training the eye to follow a single line, and padding means creating space so that the elements on the page, and your users, can breathe.
Read the two articles below and pay attention when you create new visual elements. We want our users to come into our applications feeling calm and happy. Even if that room contains valuable information, if it’s cluttered and messy no one wants to stay in it for very long.
- lukew on alignment and padding
- thinkvitamin: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity
- For more thought provoking stuff, see 37signals design decisions.
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