Grid
Theory
a.
invisible lines
Almost every layout has axes, invisible guidelines along which the key elements — text blocks, headlines, illustrations — are arranged. These guidelines are the elements of the grid. A grid can be very primitive and, for a book with a simple structure, may merely to be the baselines and margins of the text. Or it can be very complex, since it will have to deal, say, with the variety of texts, headlines, photos, announcements and graphics that make up a newspaper. For a multi-column magazine, the grid may unexpectedly change the number of columns from section to section, or on a website extend or compress in response to the width of the browser.
The structural basis of a composition is not always visible to the inexpert eye, but a layout without a grid is unlikely: it is almost surely there.
W
W
W
W
W
W
Grid
Practice
e.
structure and
integrity
In designing print publications (and all the more for digitals), grids make it possible
to determine practically any parameter. They are truly a universal tool. But in most cases the grid determines only several of the most important features of any layout:
the width of the text area, the size of type and leading, and the division of the text in columns.
1/6
f.
proportionality
Everything in the fine arts depends on proportions and relations. The experience of artists in earlier centuries hinted at the existence of elusive laws of beauty, responded to by all viewers, that were at bottom mathematical. Painting, icons, photography are obvious examples: the canvases of Botticelli, icons in churches and the photographs of Cartier-Bresson — all have the axes of the Golden Ratio. Many designers are in the habit of calculating everything — format, grid modules, relationships of type sizes. There exist two basic kinds of proportions — the rational and the irrational.
1/3
3 of 5