Re:Show HN: Desktop Fruit – A Curated Blog of Mac App Design
by seandougall on Saturday January 30, 2016 @01:42AM
(#11000838)
Whitespace can improve readability, but only up to a point. The Slack concept currently at the top of the list would fit less than a minute's worth of conversation in a moderately busy Slack channel, so the increased readability of individual messages comes at the cost of dramatically decreased readability of the conversation as a whole.
Cosmetically, generous negative space can help create a feeling of sophistication and elegance. I suspect that this kind of use is more offensive to practical people who have little use for how something "feels".
And of course sometimes it's overdone by designers, especially in cases of concepts serving as shiny, happy portfolio fodder instead of serving real users and business goals.