Grid it
I have to admit it, when I finished my design studies I didn’t have the faintest idea about what a grid was. I was featherbrained and my portfolio showed no talent at all. Fortunately, it was not a bad time to start and at that time it wasn’t so difficult to find a job as a designer. Also rather fortunately, someone taught me what I should have learned about design, the principles I was never told about at design school. They plucked all of the feathers from my brain and I learned by heart the book that inspire this post:
Now, I’d like to explain how to create a perfect grid using an essay book as an example.
What a grid is and what is its function?
The grid divides a two-dimensional plane into rows and columns which create a series of smaller fields. Their height relates to a specific number of lines of text and their width correspond to the width of the text’s columns. The grid system functions as a tool that helps designers solve visual problems and order the elements following objective and functional criteria.
Now you know what a grid is, let’s take a look at the brief: the client wants a book to publish a series of essays from diverse authors. These essays may or may not be illustrated.
The first step is to define the format of the book. As it is going to be a literary book, I imagine a small format book, one that you can handle with one hand. It will be printed on 70x100cm sheets, so I will select a 16,8x24cm size in order to use the most of the sheets without wasting paper. This format could change slightly during the design phase, but this gives ussomething to work with.
The second step is to define the margins of the page. It could seem an arbitrary decision which could easily depend on the designer’s expertise, and sometimes it is, but the analysis of the content can help you to arrive at the best option. We will be using the mechanic, organic and musical proportions proposed by Robert Bringhurst in his book “The Elements of Typographic Style” (a great book that I encourage you to read), and we will select a classic proportion: superior and exterior margins measuring 1, the interior margin 1,5 and the inferior margin 3.
Thirdly, the selection of the column width is not just a matter of design or of format, but also one of legibility. A text must readable; the succees of this matter depends on the size of the type, the length of the lines and the value of the leading. Seven to ten words per line is the standard.
For our project we will use a 4 column grid. One will be reserved for notes and captions, an the other three will be for the text. This will help us to create a seven to ten word per line grid, a balanced type size and a unique composition block.
Choosing the right leading is also crucial as it also affects the readability of the text. Lines that are too narrowly set slow the reading speed and tire the reader. If the lines are too widely set the reader could also have problems jumping to with the next text line resulting in a even more tired reader and poor comprehension when reading.
Now we will divide the grid into 8 lines; the intersection between these 8 lines and the 4 columns will result into a total of 32 fields. However, a perfect grid also depends on the relation between the leading and the empty lines. Between these separating lanes should fit a line of text and the row should meet with the line of text. This should be done this way so the pictures and the text are always aligned.
With the margins and leading defined, the next step is to determine how many lines of text fit in our grid. The number of text lines minus the number of empty lines must be divisible between the number of fields (47 lines of text — 7 empty lines = 40, 8 fields = 5 lines of text per field.)
Next we have to measure the distance between the bageline of the fifth line of text and the upper limit of the seventh text line in order to obtain the size of the empty line. At this point, if you wish, you can also adjust the size of the vertical lines so that they are the same size as the horizontal ones.
To make everything fit perfectly it is good to play with the leading, type size, margins, and even the format of the book to achieve a perfect balance between form and function.
In a perfect grid it is not only the main text which aligns with pictures, but also the captions, notes, titles and subtitles. All these elements should also be aligned with each other.
So now we have our grid, it is time to bring it to liveby placing in the content and praying that the client likes it. Otherwise you will be left with the comfort of a job well done.
Now you know how to build a grid, or at least what one is, I recommend that you use it in all your designs and, with time and experience, sometimes you will skip steps and speed up the process.
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Daniel Barrios is Senior Art Director at Erretres.
At Erretres, he has developed many projects for clients across Europe, Asia and América, including: Canal+, El País, Movistar, Hitachi, Camper, Mapfre, Banco Sabadell, KPMG, VISA and Museo del Prado.
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