When white space makes you well up

Last Thursday, there was a shooting in the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland.

On Friday, the Gazette put out a damn paper, and ran this as its editorial page.

Today, we are speechless. This page is intentionally left blank today to commemorate victims of Thursday’s shooting in our office.

I nearly cried looking at this. What gives it power is not just the words. It’s the space around the words.

Imagine if that powerful statement had appeared like this:

There’s no impact at all.

I’m always telling people, “Don’t fill up your poster! You don’t need to cover every inch with stuff!” This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about.