Two column layout — Lessons from graphic design history
Google “two column layout”. You’ll get a bunch of techniques to create the two column layout for webpages, MS Word documents, etc.
But when should we use the two column layout?
Learning about the history of graphic design gives us one clue: to create a feel of premodern books.
The first-ever printed book, the Gutenberg Bible, was produced in the 1450s, featuring a two-column layout:
A thick book with many pages is too heavy to carry around. In addition, pieces of paper were very expensive in premodern times. So book publishers would need to cram many letters on one page.
Too many letters per line, however, would make it hard for the reader to smoothly move his/her eyes from the end of a line to the beginning of the next line. Thus, the line width needs to be shortened—a lesson taught in any typography textbook. Two columns of text, instead of one, will achieve short lines as well as the packing of many letters on one page.
Saving the number of pages is thus the fundamental rationale for the two column layout.
It’s rather irrelevant for webpages, however. One reason you may want two columns on a webpage is then to invoke a feel of good old days when books were the expensive items to show off social status.
Design history is very often not taken seriously. As this example shows, however, it is full of food for thought on design decision-making.
