The document discusses grids and their uses in design. Grids break down space and time into units to establish control and structure. They provide a flexible yet resilient framework for arranging content. Historically, grids served as frames around text but are now used more flexibly. Graphic designers have applied grid principles to websites, magazines, and other mediums to bring order and hierarchy to visual information.

1. GRIDS

2. What Is A Grid
• A grid breaks space or /me into units.
• A grid can be simple or complex, specific or generic,
/ghtly defined or loosely interpreted.
• Typographic grids are all about control.
• They establish a system for arranging content within
space of a page, screen or the built environment.
• A grid is not a rigid formula but a flexible and resilient
structure, acts like a skeleton.
• Every digital Image or mark is constructed from a grid

3. Grid As Frame
Un/l the twen/eth century
grids served as frames for
fields of text. The margins of a
classical book create a barrier
around a flush block of text.
This s/ll remains the most
common book format of today.
Biblia PolygoEa
Book spread 1558

4. Dividing Space
By ques/oning the protec/ve func/on of the frame ar/sts and designers unleashed
the grid as a flexible, cri/cal and systema/c tool in the nineteenth century.
Das Bauhaus in Dessau
leEerhead 1924 designed
by Herbert Bayer

5. Grid As Programmed
The program grid is described as a set of rules for construc/ng a range of visual
solu/ons. Karl Gerstner a Swiss designer, connected his methodology with the new
field of computer programming to come up with a range of paEerns that were made
by mathema/cally describing visual elements and combining them according to simple
rules.
Die Neue
Architetktur 1940
designed by Max
Bill

6. Multicolumn Grid
Mul/column grids provide flexible formats for publica/ons that have complex
hierarchy or that integrate text and illustra/ons. The more columns you create the
more flexible your grid becomes
verlag stocker-­‐schmid,
die/kon-­‐zurich, 1962

7. Grid AS TABLE
Tables are a central aspect to web design. The table feature was incorporated into
HTML in 1995 so web authors could present tabular data. Graphic designers, eager to
give shape to the webs wide and flaccid text bodies, quickly devised unauthorized
used for the HTML table, transforming this tool for presen/ng data into nothing more,
nor less than a typographic grid.
Joshuadavis.com

8. Grid As Website
Grids in websites are the founda/on to build upon. There are quite a few websites that
display their informa/on and images in a set layout to make it easier for the reader to
go from one item to another.
MçQUADE

9. Grid As Magazine
Tom White designed this magazine spread and has been based on a two column grid. He
has used a picture to cover the le] page with a enclosed cap/on, and on the right page he
has used two columns to divide the text and has aligned two pictures within the second
column to help reduce dead space and to hold the structure.