THE GRID
Atika Ajmera
The Evolution of the Grid “well not the water hole But it’s about Graphics” Atika Ajmera Unitedworld Institute of Design VC UG Sem 4
Abstract Have you ever stopped to notice that we live in a grid? From the arrangement of pixels on the screen you’re looking at, to the organization of the urban cities in which the majority of the world dwells, this visual system of intersecting vertical and horizontal lines determines the form of more than you may realize . It is no wonder, really, that we find ourselves so locked into the grid; for we design in one, too. Since the early days of print design , hundreds of years before the term “graphic design” even existed, the grid helped printers arrange their page layouts. Now, we use the grid to parse space in design software and determine the form of websites. Even if it remains entirely behind-the-scenes, you can presume that it’s there.
What is Grid System? There is nothing worse for an artist than a blank canvas. A Grid Systems a set of measurements a graphic designer can use to align and size objects within the given format.
Typically a grid is an arrangement of horizontal and vertical lines that are utilized to subdivide a page vertically and evenly into margines, segments (columns), inter-column spaces, type lines and space between blocks of type and images. These subdivisions lay the basis of a modular and systematic methadology to the layout, especially for multipage records, making the configuration process faster along with ensuring visual consistency between related pages.
History Olden Days : The Grid before Graphic Design Before the invention of movable type, a system based on optional proportion had been used to arrange handwritten text on pages. One such system known as the Villard Diagram was in use at least since medieval times. In the 13th century, the architect Villard De Honnecourt came up wth a famous diagram used for producing page layouts with margins of fixed ratios - what was considered a “harmonious� design. This remains a guiding principle in the design of print objects such as book covers.
After World War II, a number of graphic designers including Max Bill, Emil Ruder and Josef Muller-Brockmann influenced by the modernist ideas. The New typography began to question the relevance of the conventional page layout at that time. They began to devise a flexible system able to help designers achieve coherency in organizing the page. The result was the modern typographic grid that became associated with the International Typographic Style . The seminal work on the subject, Grid Systems in graphic design by Muller-Brockmann , helped propagate the use of the grid, first in Europe, and later in North America.
Grid Systems started as helper lines for written books. It transferred to movable type where the type setting itself consisits of a grid. The grid lines continued to help printers in typesetting. This could often be as simple as a baseline that determined the scale of the headings and the body.
With the Industrial revolution came a huge demand for printed works. Many things, like slab-serif fonts, were convinced as a part of the advertising revolution. A grid system is here used to divide page space up into smaller segments, to use for advertising . The bigger the space, the more money the advertiement would cost.
Movements like the Bauhaus and the Futurists investigated the use of grid systems, and how to play within these constraints. Here it’s a page from the futurist magazine, Lacerba.
Swiss Order: Modern grid takes form As capitalism reached maturity in the late 19th century, people began to think of graphic design as a profession in itelf, and the first people to call themselves designers, like William Morris of the arts and crafts movement , began searching for words with which to describe their activities. The grid did not enter the graphic design lexicon until around World War I , in Switzerland. One of the only neutral countries in the war, Switzerland became a meeting ground for intellectual refugees from all over Europe. It was also one of the few places where printing supplies like paper and ink weren’t heavily rationed. These conditions amounted to a lot of sharp people printing a lot of multi-lingual documents, often with columns of French, Italian, German and English. This presented a design problem that typographers like Herbers Bayer and Jan Tschichold stepped up to address. One contribution of these designers was a turn away from the centered text positioning to an “assymetric� approach meant to feel more material for people reading left-to-right. Such an approach aligns text flush-left, ragged-right, often positioning the body of text slightly further to the left or right to leave a bigger margin for notes. The pages from this book exemplify the modern, assymetric page layout: text flush left, ragged right, and shifted somewhat more to one side - in case, the right.
The rule of thirds, another grid-based canon that you may be familiar with , operated based on a similar assumption that images are more dynamic and engaging when the focus is somewhat off-center.
The “rule of thirds� in photography echoes the principle that asymmetric design is more natural and dynamic. Photo by Trey Ratcliff.
Photography : Jim Zuckerman
20th Century Art and Design While Swiss typographers were establishing the centrality of the grid in print design, similar movements occured in the world of fine art. The grid is probably most evident in the Dutch De Stijl movement, founded in 1917 and headed by artists Theo van Doesburg and and Piet Mondrian. Believing in the democratic and utopian petition of modular design and absolute simplicity, they limited their canvases to intersecting vertical and horizontal lines and primary colours.
A De Stijl publication(left) alongside a painting by Piet Mondrian(right) in which the grid is clearly apparent.
Web Design Today For a time, digital technologies were seen as a way to experiment beyond the design grid. But that didn’t last long. Designers now generally find the grid to be an ideal way to organize websites and make them responsive to different devices. Grids are clean, lend good structure to a website, as easy for users to navigate and spare the designer a whole lot of trouble, as one grid can be used over and over. Because websites open up new aesthetic dimensions not available in print- like th use of a new diversity of viable colors, textures and typefaces - the same grid can be used to produce completely different looks.
Khoi Vinh made a famous website , confirm to a 14-column grid.
The New York Times website is another famous grid, consisting of a thin rail and 5-columns.
Meanwhile, the grid became more and more entrenched in graphic design. Looking at these famous posters by Josef Muller Brockmann, Richard P.Lohse, Armin Hofmann and Alberto Longhi , it’s clear they all confirm to a strict grid.
Josef Brockman
Armin Hofmann
Richard Lohse
Alberto Longhi
MANUSCRIPT GRID
MODULAR GRID
COLUMN GRID
Types of Grids
HIERARCHICAL GRID
1.Manuscript Grid Also known as a single column grid or a block grid, the manuscript grid is the easiest grid structure of all. It is predominatly an extensive rectangular area taking up a large portion of the space inside a format.
2. Column Grid
Column grids are made up by setting multiple columns inside the format. Column grids are great when disontinuous data needs to be exhibited.
Column Glutters At the point when the margins are more extensive than the glutters between columns the eye is guilded inward and strain is eased. However if the margins are narrowed than glutters, the eye is directed outward and give rise to a complex situation.
3. Modular Grid Modular grids are similar to column grids with the expansion of even divisions marked by rows. The rows and columns and the gutters between each one form a matrix of cell or modules. Modular grids are great for hard projects that all for more control than a column grid can offer.
4. Hierarchical Grid Hierarchical grids are commonly found on the web. They’re built more with respect to an instinctive position of elements m which still adjusts to the needs of the data. Customized parts are commonly used as a part of hierarchical grids instead of frequently repeated intervals. Column widths have a tendency to shift as do the location of flowlines.
Hierarchical grids are great when an undertaking requires an odd grid that doesn’t effectively fit one of the other grid netwarks and can be utilized to bind together different elements and form a superstructure for arranging them.
Conclusion Grids have been a part of the human civilization for centuries now. Modernity has influenced and evolved this grid system through it’s history of ideas and it will keep on evolving and new techniques will keep being invented to suit the current amd present lifestyles for better comfort and convenience.
Credits http://www.graphic-design-institue.com/blogs/types-grid-systemuseful-layout-making https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_(graphic_design) http://vanseodesign.com/web-design/why-grids/ https://printingcode.runemadsen.com/lecture-grid/ Thank You