OUGD404: What is a Book? Grid Research

To be fully prepared for designing our own grids and layouts for the book we'd be producing we were set the task of looking into different types of grids and the context they'd be suited for.

Grids exist as a tool for the Graphic Designer, they give order to a layout, they speed up the design process by highlighting where content should be placed and give structure to content. However a grid is only a guideline and not a dictated rule. The highlight for the designer is to know when to use the grid to structure the design and when to break the grid to keep the layout from becoming too rigid. For the audience the evidence of a grid should be present but the extent of the grid should remain unknown.

Single Column Grid

A simple grid system consisting of a single column surrounded by margins. The single column grid is for the adventurous or explorative designer, the blank space means no commitment to layout has been made and the designer is free to experiment with grids and layout using rulers, guidelines and text boxes.

Multi Column Grid

Multi-column grids allow for more flexibility and ease when it comes to using a combination of image and text, the grid becomes more flexible with each new column added. Multi-Columns also work well for handling complex hierarchies as the grid can be divided into sections or 'zones' for specific content. Most image/text will tend to overlap columns, yet remained structured. A key note when using multi-columns is the use of white space, not every inch of the page needs to be filled with content and images and text need to be balanced out by white space. 

Modular Grid

Modular grids not only have columns, the also have rows; vertical and horizontal lines dividing the space. This means that when it comes to adding image and text the balance of content to space can be easily monitored. The horizontal lines present in modular grids also give nice, tidy cropping points for text and the verticals allow text to be aligned either horizontally or vertically, giving an extra dimension to page layout.

Further Research

Other Grids

Rule of Thirds: a grid format which divides a page into thirds with two equally spaced vertical and/or horizontal lines so that important compositional elements can be placed along these lines or intersections. This method is also commonly used in photography.

Baseline: the anchor or layout elements, vertical lines are added to a baseline grid in order to produce a modular one. A baseline grid is created by taking the document's font's point size and using the measurement to space horizontal lines evenly down the page.

The Golden Ratio 

An almost magical ratio that appears in design, art, architecture and throughout the natural world. It can describe the proportions of a beautiful face, of a strong composition or even mathematically fit with the ever decreasing segments of an ammonite shell. It can also calculate the distance between one note and the next in order to create perfect harmony. Numerically the golden ratio is described as 1 : 1.618, but physically it appears as a perfect square on a page with a rectangle left over that can also fit within it a perfect square with a rectangle left over which can also fit within it a perfect square with a rectangle left over etc etc etc. 

Grid Anatomy

1. Margins: The space that separates the content from the edge of the page.
2. Flowlines: Alignments that break the space into horizontal bands.
3. Columns: Vertical divisions of space on a page.
4. Rows: A series of flowlines that create horizontal divisions of space on a page.
5. Gutters: Space that separates rows and columns or two facing pages.
6. Modules: Individual units of space created from intersecting rows and columns.
7. Spatial Zones: Groups of modules that cross multiple rows and columns.