Horror Vacui is Latin for ‘the fear of emptiness.’ It is the practice of filling a space with as many design elements as possible. As a design principle, it was a historically popular in the Victorian, Georgian, and Baroque eras, in times when having more meant you were more affluent.1
Today, we are overwhelmed with options and choice, so minimalism and simplicity have become the trend. This means that there has been a shift in value perception. Now, the busier and more cluttered a design, the cheaper the product feels. Brands may choose to employ horror vacui based on their product positioning—for the Dollar Store, cheap is a good thing.
Example 1: Dollar Store vs. Jewelry Store
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Source: The Visual Communication Guy |
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Source: The Visual Communication Guy |
Example 2: The Cheesecake Factory vs. Ramen Hood
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Source: The Cheesecake Factory |
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Source: Ramen Hood |
Example 3: Attorneys/Abogados
This store window in downtown Los Angeles markets the attorneys inside to low-income clients with its use of horror vacui. It not only fills up most of the window space with information, but also advertises many different kinds of potential lawsuits that the lawyers could represent the clients on.
Footnotes
1“Horror Vacui: The Fear of Emptiness | Interaction Design Foundation.” 8 Aug. 2018, https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/horror-vacui-the-fear-of-emptiness.
Hey Team 6,
The window example reminds of some of the ads in magazines where the person who designed the ad is filling the entire space to fit in as much text and graphics as possible. I like how Horror Vacui addresses it as fear of emptiness. In advertising I have always seen it as a fear of not saying just the right thing and it feels a bit desperate with the hopes that just the right phrase will draw people in.
During one of our sketching exercises for 280, two of my critiques were advertising; a business card and a flyer for carpet cleaning. They both had so much packed onto them, it was impossible to focus on anything specific.