Editor’s Note: This week’s post comes from Cheryl Wituik of Vortex Visual Concepts, a Registered Graphic Designer from London, Ontario. Cheryl likes to put a different spin on all things design, and in this article she talks about how filling white space with nothin’ at all is actually a good thing! Check out Cheryl’s website and follow her on Twitter.

The title of William Shakespeare’s classic comedy, taken literally, implies that a great fuss is being made over something insignificant, or unimportant. However, I’ve borrowed this title to illustrate just the opposite can be true when talking about graphic design and layout.

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Today I had tea with a group of entrepreneurial women at the monthly WHO (Women in a Home Office) meeting. I was invited to share what I know about creating a flow of traffic to one’s website. Among other things, we discussed the importance of having and maintaining a blog as part of a strategy to increase exposure. This is a synopsis of my presentation:

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I’m not what you would call a good gardener – but my friend Janine is. It seems that with a simple flick of her green thumb, Janine’s gardens magically transform into captivating arrays of colour, fragrance and style. When she offered to bring her special touch to my sad front garden, I jumped at the chance.

While digging in the dirt and learning how to make my garden grow, it struck me that there were some definite similarities between creating a beautiful garden and writing engaging copy.

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Still a relatively new concept for many companies, SEO or Search Engine Optimization can seem like a magic pill. While it doesn’t happen overnight, in time, your newly SEO-ed site begins to rise in the rankings. You may notice you have more visitors, and maybe you start to see an increase in conversions or sales. These shifts must mean your SEO is working. Now that that’s done, you can relax, right?

Wrong.

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These days, it’s not unusual to conduct business with team members in different cities or countries. Recently, I had an opportunity to work on an exciting project along with other individuals who were also outsourced.

We “met” every week through conference calls and our project manager, working from his home office, kept everyone on track. Although we were independents, it was important that we gelled as a team to deliver the best results for our client.

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