Typophile - Grid systems - Comments

Both of Kimberly Elam’s

Ricardo Cordoba — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:33:08 -0700

Both of Kimberly Elam’s Books are rich with information about grid use and structure.

She has a third one, just out, that may also be of use: Typographic Systems.

Hello Can anyone help.

tayfighter — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:02:00 -0700

Hello Can anyone help. I’ve finally got round to reading Grid systems by Muller-Brockmann and i’m up to the bit about constructing the grid. Now i understand that 1 Cicero = 12 points.

But on page 59, how does it work out that 55 lines in 4 grid fields with a gutter of 1 line equates to 54 ciceros and 8 points?

Thanks

Miss Tiffany — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:49:10 -0800

Good suggestion, Michael. Both of Kimberly Elam's Books are rich with information about grid use and structure.

myoung — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:31:38 -0800

Rafael, have you read Kimberly Elam's other book on geometry in design? I think it's a nice companion to Grid systems. That and Bringhurst, typographic style seems to a little bit of everything, but never skims the surface.

Sujit, "Less is more" everytime I hear that it means something new to me. Good advice.

kaisa — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 05:36:19 -0800

... and I should recognise a typo and practice well-considered spelling. As said, you never stop learning.

kaisa — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 01:51:14 -0800

Just study classic examples of great design. What's aligning, and where. See Proportions. See Spaces. Learn from the masters - you so need to build on a skeleton/basis and understanding of good classic design in order to develop your own style. Observe good design and layout wherever you see it. Stop and take note of why it is special. So much of good/great design is based on acute observation and study and awareness. That's what it boils down to, in the end, IMHO. There's no magic formula. I think many people recongnise well-considered and inspired design when they see it, even if only subconsciously. It just looks *amazing*.

I'm only learning now after some 20 years in design (as a 3rd generation artist and designer in my family) that "to study design - study type." I would only add "classic type". Nothing is as sublime as the lessons of space and line and proportion that observing beautiful type can teach you. You will continue to learn from it all your life. It never stops - how wonderful.

all the best,

Kaisa

as8 — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 11:55:44 -0800

Designnavigator.com Grid System Templates
http://tinyurl.com/6zarc

sujit — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:00:37 -0800

Judging from the response Jamie, you have many excellent suggestions so I don't wish to repeat anything already mentioned but would like to say that "typography" even in context of the grid system will never reach its full potential if tackled as a "technique", still less a "formula". So if you are bitten by the grid bug as I was many years ago when I bought many books (Mueller Brockman, Armin Hoffman etc) and discovered for myself the truth of the statement "Less is More" and also the fact that "Simple Design" is far more difficult than cluttered and overdone design (I'm NOT describing Emigre, Neville Brody, David Carson kind of stuff which I love).

So instead of looking for "how to design a grid within Quark or InDesign" (that is not difficult) I would suggest - try to understand the principles better, see more examples of how different designers have stretched the grid system (Wolfgang Weingart, April Greiman) or amazingly made it look as if it is no limitation at all to design the most inspiring (opposed to mechanical and cold as SWISS typography is often accused of being)work in the Grid System as shown by Helmut Schmid who studied under Emile Ruder and now lives in Japan ... his work shows "that you don't have to abandon the grid to design something that can be poetic, warm, inspiring as well as "unpredictable".

Sorry if you find this response too lengthy. I'm posting here for the first time.

Sujit Patwardhan
Pune, India

tina — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:57:06 -0800

There is a very useful book by Hans Rudolf Bosshard: "Der typografische Raster. The typographic grid", Verlag Niggli AG, 2000, ISBN 3-7212-0340-2. The text is both german and english. It consists of about 130 pages of examples with grid-explanations as well as about 35 pages of theoretical abstract, containing a list of standard book formats as well.

rafael_lueder — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 08:45:15 -0800

I forgot to tell you that I used the A4 format in a landscape (horizontal)position and villard

rafael_lueder — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 08:42:20 -0800

Hi there, long post ahead, I

kanoo — Wed, 3 Nov 2004 07:09:42 -0800

Thanks tiffany, I already have Typography: Macro- and Microaesthetics, I'll have to check out making and breaking the grid-ive heard good things about it, I think I'm just getting confused with all the mathmatics, em's picas,ciceros, cm etc, trying to construct it Brockmans way becuase he's so precise...and I just need to practice constructing a few more grids.

negativespace — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 22:47:55 -0700

I own Brockmans book and also looking to get the making and breaking the book that Tiffany mentioned.

But I would definitely recommend the Willi Kunz book, I have both of his books and they are really good, not too text heavy with a lot of experiments, and images to illustrate his points.

Miss Tiffany — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 09:26:41 -0700

That said, another book that you might consider would be Timothy Samara's Making and Breaking the Grid

I seem to also recall the book Typography: Macro- and Microaesthetics by Willi Kunz having some discussion of the grid in terms of white space.

Miss Tiffany — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 09:20:37 -0700

Jamie, the best thing you can do is not take it all too literally. The grid, in design, is simply the structure or the bones, of any given project.

By laying down any set of guides on a master page in either quark or indy these guides transfer themselves to all of the other pages. You can set up multiple master pages to be used in different ways and different things. For instance, you can set up a left-hand page set of guides and a right-hand set of guides that set forth the "rules" or "guides" by which you lay certain text blocks down. If you look at some of the better designed magazines out there (IMHO) you can see that the feature articles have different grids followed compared to the lead-in articles. Living (formerly Martha Stewart Living) has such rules ... rhymnes and reasons for everything right down to how many points apart the pictures are placed.

On the master pages you can also set up page numbers, footers and headers, rules, etc.

Does any of this start to answer your questions?

Grid systems

kanoo — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 09:05:56 -0700

I just picked up Josef Muller-Brockman's "Grid systems in graphic design" I've read it and I understand the principles I think.

But its just trying to transfer them over to layout programs such as quark or in design

Are there any modern books out there which approach the design of the grid as in depth as Muller-Brockman's book? but show you how to design and construct the grid within in-design
or quark?

cheers