The Grid
What is a Grid?
Creative people use rulers, guides, and lines to place elements on a page and have them look
good together. These underlying horizontal and vertical lines are what we call The Grid.
Consider this as a scaffolding, a foundation, or a skeleton. While creating your design, these
grid lines are used for laying out text, aligning images, and making columns or rows. These lines
are removed or covered up when finalizing your work.
On a canvas, a painter may make rough pencil lines. Muralists draw a grid on a big wall before
they add their artwork, and magazine designers use digital grids.
You don’t always have to follow the grid, but when you break out of the grid...do it intentionally.
Not accidentally.
Explore these grid-related topics in the coming slides.
Digital Layout
The Golden Ratio Composition
The Rule of Thirds
Grid strategies for your
computer-based projects.
The art of using math
to make art.
Utilize the traditional strategies
of artists and painters.
A classic grid approach to
improve your images.
How can I use grids in my projects?
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Why should I use a Grid?
Makes design more sophisticated and cohesive
Grids help to establish a visual hierarchy
If designers didn’t use a grid, we’d never be able to read a
newspaper or map
When you occasionally break out of the grid, it has more
emphasis and impact
Grids allow designers to make quicker decision
Balance is easier to achieve with grid
When a page is laid out well, we say that it has harmony...all
the elements are singing together. Grids allow harmony.

Composition
When shooting a photo, designing a PowerPoint slide, or
creating an illustration, try to visualize the overall shape you
are making. These classic approaches have aided artists
throughout history. Imagine these shapes as an invisible
grid over your work and let it be a loose guide.
Triangle / Pyramid
Cross
Radiating Lines
Golden Triangles
Focal Group
Diagonal
Circle
Frame within a Frame
Fulcrum / Steelyard
Compound Curve (the S curve)
Tunnel
L Shaped
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