The quiet work of alignment, spacing, and consistency

I was digging into the Shift Nudge critique archives recently and came across a Loom video sent to one of my early students.

Nothing too fancy. Left-aligned content, chunky selections, a nice primary CTA. It looked pretty nice.

But the goal with professional interface design is to really scrutinize every single pixel and make each one really earn its place, so let’s dig in.

The selection indicators on the left were sitting at 28 pixels from the edge. The CTA was 56 pixels tall, and each line item was set at 69 pixels.

The selected state was technically selected, but not unmistakable or "painfully obvious", as I like to say.

And the headline color was quietly competing with the button. None of this was fully “wrong” per se, but made the screen feel less clear and impactful than it needed to be.

So as a quick exercise, I nudge 8 pixels here, thirteen there. Standardized heights. Unified the spacing. I made the selected state obvious. And the whole thing immediately felt more intentional. Same layout. Same content. Same general vibe. But now it’s following a clear and logical set of design constraints.

Alignment, spacing, and consistency do the heavy lifting long before color and decoration ever show up.

When you tighten edge alignment, you create relationships that the eye trusts. Moving those dots from 28 to 20 pixels didn’t just “look cleaner.” It connected the indicators to the content a little more.

When you standardize heights, you remove visual noise. Bringing 69 down to 56 to match the CTA made the system feel like a system.

Selection states must be unmistakable. Full background for “on” and a clear “off.” If a user has to think hard about what’s happening, the design already failed.

Typography falls under the same rule. If a single 16-point outlier forces a new rhythm that nothing else uses, try using the same font size as your other elements.

A simple spacing framework carries the rest. In this design, I leaned on a 20-point standard with a few 16-point exceptions when elements needed to feel more closely related. It’s less about strict rules and more about creating a rhythm. Once the rhythm clicks, the interface snaps together.

When spacing, heights, and type sizes follow a pattern, your work sends a clear signal: this was designed with care. That signal is what earns trust.