Spring GDS 25th Anniversary
A logistics company that ships to 190 countries built something to ship to itself.
Spacing and layout
What is spacing and layout?
Spacing and layout are how an interface organises elements in space so people can read and use it without effort. Spacing is the gaps: the margins around a block, the padding inside a button, the room between a heading and the text below it. Layout is the larger arrangement, the grid and structure that decide where things sit on the page. Together they shape how an interface feels long before anyone reads a word of it.
Whitespace, the empty area between and around elements, does most of the quiet work. It groups related things, separates unrelated ones, and gives the eye somewhere to rest. The proximity principle is simple: things placed close together read as connected, things spread apart read as separate. A pricing page where the price sits tight to its plan name and far from the next plan is instantly clearer than one with even gaps everywhere. Grids keep all of this consistent across screens, aligning content to a shared structure so a layout feels deliberate rather than assembled.
Consistency is what turns spacing from guesswork into a system. Teams define a spacing scale, a fixed set of values like 4, 8, 16, and 24 pixels, and use only those. The constraint produces visual rhythm and stops the slow drift toward dozens of slightly different gaps that makes a product feel sloppy without anyone being able to say why.
Spacing and layout at Dallonses
We set a spacing scale and a grid at the start, then enforce them through the design system. It sounds dry. It is the difference between a product that feels coherent at the hundredth screen and one that quietly falls apart. When spacing comes from tokens rather than someone's eye in the moment, a team can ship quickly without the layout decaying.
This is core to our user interface design and design systems work. We use space to build hierarchy and grouping, so the structure of a page tells users what belongs together before they read anything. We test layouts at real breakpoints, because a grid that breathes on a desktop can choke on a phone. Get the spacing right and the interface feels calm, which is usually the highest compliment a layout can earn.
Interface feeling cramped or chaotic? Let's bring some order to it.
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