I think, as others have already mentioned, it's not all one way or the other. Different situations require different approaches. In general, being aware and co

I think, as others have already mentioned, it's not all one way or the other. Different situations require different approaches. In general, being aware and correctly using negative/white space is a good thing. The problem is that the article doesn't actually explain this part correctly. To make things worse, the example chosen has an extremely narrow focus. The key point to learn is that white space can produce layout as much as elements do. This is, in fact, already explained then talking about proximity. You can't really establish proximity if you don't establish separation, so you can't produce a clear layout if you don't keep some spaces "empty". And so, yes, it shouldn't be about maximizing white space, but about using it correctly and making it part of your layout. Generally, the rule with white space is not about maximizing but this one: Give an element as much white space as the difference in importance of the element over its surroundings. That is, if an element is differentially more important, it should have more white space around it. So if you only have one very important element and some others much less so, then sure, that element will take over a large amount of its surrounding space and that should be kept empty. This is the example shown in the article, where there is only one important element. In the case you mention, in an information dense layout, you tend to have numbers of elements of similar importance, and so they will have to share white space and produce a more compact -dense- layout.