Just realized my auto layout padding was off by 8px on every single mockup for 3 months

A coworker zoomed in on my footer component and asked why the spacing looked 'floating' and I checked my numeric field to find I had 16px instead of 24px set as my default for all four sides, has anyone else had a default setting mess up their entire file for weeks before catching it?

3 comments

3 Comments

emma_ramirez3d ago

Oh man, that's brutal... sometimes it's good to check if you accidentally imported a different design system or component library into your file, that can silently override all your spacings.

robert_bennett292d agoMost Upvoted

Whoa there, calm down. It's 8 pixels man, not the end of the world. Unless you're doing NASA-level precision UI, nobody is zooming in that close to notice a tiny gap difference between components. Your coworker is just being a nitpicker.

lucaslane1d ago

Yeah, that whole "it's just 8 pixels" thing reminds me of what happened to my buddy Dave at his last job. He had his base spacing set to 6px for like two months building out a whole e-commerce dashboard. The whole thing looked like a half-assed Tetris game, everything bumping into each other or floating weirdly. His manager finally pointed it out during a review and Dave just stared at the screen, totally blank, before saying "oh, that's why the checkout button looked lonely.