Learn why negative space works in design and photography, and pick up a few tips for using it in your own creative content.
As humans and as artists, we often think of empty space as something we need to avoid. We’re compelled to fill in the blanks and emptiness as if they’re something displeasing.
However, negative space is one of the most crucial aspects of design. When we embrace the use of space in a design or photography piece, it allows us to seamlessly create visual hierarchy. By creating gaps, we ensure a viewer can digest the information in the way we want to present it.
What Is Negative Space in Graphic Design and Photography?
In design and photography, negative space images—often referred to as “empty space” or “white space“—encompass the use of “blank space,” and they have the power to either elevate or undermine a composition.
Negative space includes the space around your focus object(s), as well as the layout between and inside them. It essentially acts as a breathing space for the viewer’s eyes.
Positive Space vs. Negative Space
Before we talk about what negative space images and compositions bring to the table, let’s quickly touch on the inverse—positive space.
In design, positive space is the main subject or area of interest. It’s the items or people that are the focus of the composition, and it’s where we want to direct our observer’s attention.
Simply put, positive space is what makes negative space so important, because negative space makes positive space more visible. After all, there can be no contrasting vividness or dynamic focal point without surrounding neutrality to draw the eye there in the first place.
Essentially, negative space allows a designer to control a viewer’s visual concentration and direct them to important information that should be absorbed first.
Negative space is an important tool for defining the outline of an object, creating proportion, and striking equanimity between multiple shapes, textures, texts, and colors. It allows us to harness symbolism and choose the lasting impression our art or design will have on its viewing audience.
Designers can create and shape positive space using negative space. By interlocking various negative shapes and texts, a designer can carve out beautiful eye-catching positive space visuals.
This results in memorable centerpieces, logos, illustrations, and even information.
Cramming as much visual information as possible into a piece (unless its a stylistic choice) may prevent your viewer from knowing where to look first.
Negative space keeps the viewer from being overwhelmed by a design, serving an airy buffer between elements that can reduce distraction and overload.
The advantages of applying negative space in all forms of design include:
- Easing the bonds between object elements
- Preventing a cluttered design or photo
- Adding style and elegance
- Improving the flow of a piece of content
- Allowing the eye to comfortably scan a design
- Creating easier legibility and readability
- Building an aesthetic/mood
- Contrasting and incorporating balance
Negative Space: Common Misconceptions
One of the most common misconceptions about negative space is that it has to be hollow, plain, or colorless. In fact, the opposite is true. Negative space—or white space—doesn’t have to be white. It can include any color, texture, image, or even pattern, as long as it works to highlight positive space.
For example, a designer can use shapes in negative space to frame positive space text, subjects, or symbols they want the viewer to read and remember.
In photography, we can also use this negative space technique to clearly shift the observer’s focus to a main subject in the positive space. Black and white versus a color contrast is an easy, eye-catching way to do this.
Pick a subject in your photo frame that you want to highlight—it could be a person, an object, even a shadow. When editing the photo, opt to keep the color of the main subject (or even up its intensity) while making the negative space (the environment around said subject) black and white, or some other kind of neutral tone.
This way, the negative space is natural and interesting, all without boring the viewer with a plain white or color block background.
You can also play with texture during the prop process of a photoshoot—or post-shoot editing—for a similar negative space effect.
Tips for Incorporating Negative Space into Imagery and Design
Now that you have a clear understanding of what negative space is and why it truly is the core of any great design or image, let’s learn how to effectively start incorporating negative space arrangements into your designs or photography.
Here are some interesting and popular negative space concepts. These strategies apply to most types of creative work, like photography and graphic and web design.
1. Implementing Visual Hierarchy
Implementing visual hierarchy is a nice way to easily create positive and negative space balance. Visual hierarchy in design is when you order your design elements based on importance. First, add the important information or visuals. Then, secondary content.
When designing or taking a picture, ask yourself about the flow:
- Where will a viewer’s eyes naturally fall?
- Where is the second place the eyes will go?
- Where will the eyes go at the end?
- Most importantly, where do you want the viewer’s eyes to go?
Imagining or researching the flow will indicate where visual elements should be placed based on their importance. It will help you prioritize the appeal—or lack thereof—of each element, according to what you want your viewer to experience when viewing your design or image.
Guide your viewer with your choices rather than letting their eyes bounce around your design.
Remembering the principle of visual hierarchy when designing will help decide where to apply negative space and produce a hierarchy of information that leads viewers or potential customers down the right path.
2. Balance the Color Palette
As mentioned earlier, negative space doesn’t restrict you to using plain white backgrounds or borders. A good design should be able to balance color in the negative space and manipulate it in order to portray a story, message, or symbol.
However, this doesn’t mean you should go overboard when using colors in negative space. Remember, you don’t want your image or design to feel cluttered or unfocused.
Negative space is there to complement the positive space, not draw attention away from it.
A good rule of thumb is to leverage two or three colors in your negative space. This can be in the form of having one color as the background and one or two other colors in shapes over that background.
Don’t be afraid to play with unique color combinations, just as long as it doesn’t overwhelm the color—or lack thereof—in the positive space.
3. Framing
One of the most popular uses of negative space (especially in photography) is framing. Simplistic yet effective, negative space framing is useful whether you’re creating a poster, logo, or snapping a photo.
Framing is a core design principle that many designers use to highlight a focal point.
Negative spacing in visual framing is usually related to minimalist aesthetics and typically has the negative space surrounding a main subject. It’s used to emphasize the focal point and accentuate the empty space around the main object.
It guides the viewer to focus on the central subject by having them clearly absorb the emptiness surrounding it, further defining the motif.
Framing and the Rule of Thirds
The Rule of Thirds is one of the most popular compositional techniques used in photography and design. This rule divides an image into nine sections, creating four intersecting points that become focal points for the viewer.
When it comes to incorporating negative space with the Rule of Thirds, photographers and designers opt for leaving one or two of those intersection points empty in order to draw attention to a particular focal point.
This emphasizes the empty space, allowing the viewer to focus more on the subject or message and how it relates to the negative space.
The Rule of Thirds is a powerful tool to use in your negative space photography and designs.
4. Key Elements of Layering and Negative Space
When working with negative space, don’t be afraid to push the limits of light, texture, and layers to create unique designs.
Use the technique of “overlapping” to form clever negative space in a design. As you overlap, consider two (or more) items, icons, objects, or shapes to employ. Assign one subject as positive space and the other as negative space. Have one object or shape work as negative space, and overlap the other “positive space” object.
This can sometimes create an almost cutout effect, and it can be a particularly fun and practical choice to utilize for designs or brands that have multiple missions or purposes.
Another way to layer negative space is by using shadows. Strategically highlighting shadows is an interesting way of using negative space in a design or image by adding more visual interest.
Negative space photography does this by playing with lighting in front of your subject. One side of the potential image should be well lit, and the other side should be darker in order to create an exaggerated shadow around your subject.
Creating negative space shadow effects for graphic design essentially works in the same way. Instead of setting up lighting, mentally picture your idea for a logo or illustration as a 3D object. Use a photographic reference to give you a picture of where the shadow would drop on your subject if it were a tangible object.
When designing your art, use the light portion as the positive space and the darkened portion as the negative space. Or vice versa. Contrasting shadow in the negative space makes a main subject appear more vivid and dynamic in the positive.
Our last shadow layering strategy is using opacity to form balanced and creative negative space.
Different degrees of opacity can make an object look heavy or light and present an order of dominance. Overlapping transparent components will create a dynamic composition that helps you control perspective and space, forming seamless barriers between positive and negative space.
5. Negative Space in Lettering
Negative space letters is a clever way to get creative, especially when designing an innovative logo or symbol.
With lettering, your positive space and subject are the letters themselves. This usually means the negative space (blank space) around the letters gets overlooked.
But, you can actually make the negative space around the letters flourish by finding interesting ways to interpret the space in relation to the meaning of the letters.
6. Negative Space Photography
Negative space photography is a creative and unique way to capture stunning images. It involves using negative space to guide the viewer’s attention to the main subject of the photograph, much like the rest of the mediums discussed.
When taking a photo with negative space, it’s important to position your subject in a way that creates harmony between the positive and negative space. As we mentioned before, pay attention to the balance between light and dark areas, as well as how the negative space can enhance the composition of the photograph.
Negative space photography is great for creating powerful and beautiful images.
How to Create Negative Space in Your Photographs
Creating negative space in your photographs is a great way to enhance the composition of an image and draw attention to the main subject.
Here are some tips for making use of negative space in your photos:
- Pay attention to balance: When incorporating negative space into your photograph, pay close attention to the balance between light and dark areas. This creates a striking photographic composition that will draw attention to the main subject matter.
- Use natural surroundings: Make use of natural surroundings such as rocks, trees, and other elements in your photo to provide a greater depth of field and create a more interesting background for your main subject.
- Capture movement: Incorporating movement into your photograph can be an effective way to add negative space and make the image more dynamic. Capturing elements such as the wind, waves, and animals will help add impact to your photo.
- Avoid clutter: With negative space photography, it is important to avoid clutter. Make sure you keep the frame free of unnecessary objects so that the negative space can be highlighted and draw attention to your main subject.
- Shallow depth of field: Shallow depth of field is another great way to add negative space into your photograph. By using a shallow depth of field, you can blur out the background elements and draw attention to the main subject in the foreground. A blurred background can be a powerful tool in almost all photographs, especially when looking to play with compositional balance. Using a wide aperture will also help create more contrast between light and dark areas, making it easier to achieve an effective composition with negative space.
Finally, be creative when incorporating negative space into your photographs. Finding unique ways to make use of negative space will help you create powerful images that stand out from the crowd.
Let’s Embrace Negative Space
Negative space may sound, well, negative. However, as we now know, it’s anything but when it comes to design and photography! It is the core of any high-quality and well-planned image or graphic design piece.
Negative space adds enhanced visual navigability and prevents elements from becoming overwhelmingly busy. Moreover, harnessing negative space in design forms compelling visual content and gives you control of where your audience’s attention should linger and be directed.
Now that you have an idea of what negative space is and how you can effectively incorporate it into your imagery and design, use the incredible power of negative space to create visuals that are out of this world creative, practical, and purposeful.
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