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Negative Space: it’s not there

… space on the plate, space around the text, space within the text: take away to add meaning …

MARTINA NICOLLS

Sep 22

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As American fantasy writer Emma Bull asked in her 1994 book Finder, “Is negative space the space you don’t like or the space that is not there?”

Walk into a well-designed room, flip through a beautifully composed magazine, read a feature article, or a Hemingway novel, and you’ll find something curiously absent at the heart of the experience: negative space. It’s all the things that aren’t there.

Designers, architects, editors, and efficient writers know this secret: what isn’t there is just as important as what is.

The topic of negative space arose today when I was talking to a teacher who had just changed rooms at her school. She was describing how much her energy changed for the better in the new room. The reason she said was simply “there was space between the tables and work areas. I could move around, learners could form groups more easily, and it was easier to converse with them more effectively.” She was ecstatic, elevated, even motivated to deploy more interactive methods of teaching. She had, for so long, been in a cramped room that she had forgotten how much the space felt liberating and energizing for her and her students.

I remember the first time I truly understood the importance of negative space. Initially, I thought the placement of furniture was decorative and about the items that were “there” but when I discovered the geomancy of Feng Shui, and moved an armchair away from a doorway, the whole room was more expansive and energized. The flow of energy was practical, and almost architectural. The empty space by the doorway enabled easier movement and a sense of light. It had nothing to do with the chair that was there but the chair that was no longer there, because it was moved to a better space or removed completely.

Architects and interior decorators think the same way. The spaces between furniture and walls make the room more pleasing. Look at a cathedral nave. The soaring emptiness above you is what magnifies your awe. The negative space in architecture is what makes us appreciate what is left.

Singer, songwriter Bob Dylan said, “Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow.”

Pick up a copy of National Geographic or a Vogue fashion spread. The text never fills the pages. Instead, there are wide margins, spacious gutters, and occasional full-bleed photographs surrounded by emptiness. None of these are accidental. There is space between the text, between the photographs, between the illustrations, and even within them.

Martin James Wallis in his 2025 book The Art of Sip and Savour, a cookbook, writes, “Negative space on the plate matters as much as in the glass — let your garnishes breathe.” Space on the plate: chefs know the aesthetics of food placement.

Daniel H. Pink, who writes about science and creativity, said, “The teacher showed us how to use proportions, relationships, light and shadow, negative space, and space between space – something I never noticed before. In one week, I went from not knowing how to draw to sketching a detailed portrait. It literally changed the way I see things.”

Writers have their own negative spaces. Their negative spaces exist in what is left unsaid, or a scene that happens off-stage, or the past hinted at but never described, or a character’s thought that remains silent.

Negative space is not wasted space. The absence of text – the blank space – allows the eye to rest and the mind to focus on the text. Too much text, crammed edge to edge, is like too much clutter in a room.

Novelist Rebecca Miller said, “I was trained to look at colour, edges, to see negative space. I honestly think my greatest influence as a writer is from Cubism – the idea of a multi-faceted, multi-perspective way of looking at things.”

Author Ernest Hemingway’s iceberg theory – the theory of omission – is the classic example of writing. It’s the minimal use of words in a story – leaving out the clutter – likened to an iceberg: what lies beneath, invisible, gives the visible its weight. Or as Hemingway put it, “how to get the most from the least.”

In magazines, negative space gives our eyes rest. In architecture, it’s aesthetics. In our own homes and lives, it clears the way for energy, movement, order, and clarity. In stories, it lets silence speak louder than words. Negative space, in all its forms, is not emptiness. It is the gap that enables generosity, a zone of vitality, where imagination and emotions unfold.