Whitespace / negative space
The empty room around and between elements. Not wasted space: it groups things, sets pace, and makes what matters readable.
See it
What it is
Whitespace (also called negative space) is the empty area around and between elements. It is doing work: it groups related items, separates unrelated ones, sets reading pace, and makes the thing you kept read as important. Swiss/International Typographic Style built an entire movement on it, and every Apple product page is a modern master class.
It comes in two sizes. Macro whitespace is the big stuff: page margins, gaps between sections, the room around a hero. Micro whitespace is line height, letter spacing, button padding, and the gap between a label and its input. Cramped micro space is why a layout can feel cheap even when the grid is perfect.
Gotcha: it is not white and it is not free space. It can be any background, and spreading space evenly everywhere destroys grouping, since proximity is what tells people which caption belongs to which image. Push space between groups and pull it in within a group. Expect someone to call the result 'empty' and ask you to fill it.
Ask AI for it
Increase the whitespace in this layout using a 4px-based spacing scale (4, 8, 16, 24, 32, 64, 96). Give sections 96px of vertical breathing room, keep related items (label and value, image and caption) within 8px of each other, and push at least 32px between unrelated groups. Raise body line height to 1.6, cap the text column near 65 characters, and delete divider lines and boxes wherever spacing alone can do the separating. Do not add content to fill the space that opens up.