Think of it this way. Negative space is essential in providing spatial relationships between items. You need to guide your readers eyes, with purpose, and one w

Think of it this way. Negative space is essential in providing spatial relationships between items. You need to guide your readers eyes, with purpose, and one way to do that is by being smart in use of negative space. A lot of designers starting out focus on what to put in, where in fact, a good design is essentially what you leave out. It takes discipline and experience, but most of all, it's derived from a deep understanding of the project requirements at hand. A good designer is 70% researcher, 30% designer. Are you trying to build emphasis on a feature or message? What is the goal behind this web/app page design? etc. All are question that need to be answered and understood before the sketching period, way before a first mockup rendition. One method or guide you with alignment is to use a grid layout. Grab a guided PSD file http://960.gs/ http://960.gs/ and when you position your elements, try to build relationships between your elements by the way you align them on the grid. Hope that helps.