Khoi Vinh knows what makes a layout tick. Named one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business,” Vinh has been a leading figure in the design community for more than two decades. He writes a widely read blog on design and technology at Subtraction and hosts Wireframe, Adobe’s documentary podcast about design.

As a serial entrepreneur and the former design director responsible for ushering the New York Times into the digital era, Vinh’s gimlet eye takes an editorial approach to layout. Here, he shares his top-level tips to consider when creating for digital and interactive platforms.

There are a host of good user experience practices that every designer should master when creating digital interfaces and layouts. To name but a few, these include knowing who your users are and what they want to do; prototyping the experience you’re designing early, and often; as well as planning out the whole journey your users will take together — and holistically, not just individual screens in isolation.

Below are a few top-level points I like to keep in mind, when it comes to creating digital interfaces and layouts. At their core, these tips are all about the fundamental work of putting elements on a screen or page so that they’re usable and useful to real people.

Put on your editorial thinking cap.

The fewer items on a screen, the better. It can be hard to rein in the requirements for a given screen: Often, you can’t help the need to include literally dozens of thumbnails, text blocks, and controls. But each additional element adds a little bit of cognitive overhead for the users —another thing for them to evaluate whether it’s relevant to their goal in that moment or not.

Choose your styles carefully.

Whenever possible, try to minimize the number of sizes, colors, and styles you’re using on a screen, whether they pertain to the text, or to visual elements such as buttons, controls, and images. In the case of layouts, less is more.

Let a thing be what it is.

If it’s a button, make it look like a button. If it’s a form field, make it look like a form field. Creativity is good, but redesigning familiar elements to the point that users have to work harder to understand how something works is a waste of your talents — and their time. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Is your display text staying or going?

It’s tempting to put headline text directly on top of a photo so that it’s “knocked out” or reversed out of the image. But very often, the unintended effect is that it looks like an advertisement, or unintentionally suggests it will direct a user to another website when they click on it. By contrast, a headline that is set directly against the background of the full page itself will appear — and function — with more clarity.

Spacing is everything.

Pay careful attention to the spacing around every item in your layout. Ask yourself: Is it sufficient for the eye to read comfortably? Is there ample spacing around buttons or hit areas for a user to effectively engage with them? Is spacing consistent from element to element? Are elements that are close to each other or parallel to one another visually aligned? Consistent, rational spacing is really what separates the professionals from the amateurs.

Give it a test run (or two).

My final rule? No rule is absolute. Even if you follow all of these rules, it’s still possible (likely, even) that your users will be confused by some aspect of your design that you might never have suspected as being counterintuitive. Before you put your work out into the world, always put your design in front of real users to gauge its effectiveness. Test, test, test, then refine and reiterate as needed.