layout
Whitespace (negative space)
Deliberately empty space used as an active design tool – nothing to do with the colour white, everything to do with emptiness on purpose.
Two useful splits. Macro vs micro: macro space sits around layout blocks (page margins, gaps between sections) and organises the whole page; micro space sits inside elements (button padding, letter and line spacing) and governs comfort at close range.
Passive vs active: passive whitespace just makes things easier to read – the margin around a paragraph. Active whitespace is an attention tool – isolating one element so it reads as more important than everything crowding together elsewhere. Confusing the two is a classic junior mistake: adding space everywhere “to be safe” misses the chance to spend space deliberately on the thing that matters. The polished-restrained look (Linear, Apple) is mostly active whitespace doing quiet hierarchy work.