Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type

Rating:
Summary: Makes a Perfect Textbook for Understanding the Grid
Review: One of the fundamental goals of any Graphic Design curriculum is to understand the enigmatic concept of the grid. When I was in design school, we were given an opaque five-minute lecture about the grid, and were then instructed to do an exercise that was supposed to teach us how to use the grid. The entire lesson was confusing, and I never could get a clear answer from an instructor on exactly how to use the grid, and so I was left to fend for myself on that matter.

If only my instructors had been armed with Kimberly Elam's "Grid Systems." Elam has written a well-organized survey of the basics of understanding the grid. The book acts as a course guide, organized into five sections, or exercises. She opens the book with an introductory exercise that explains the grid, proportions, use of ornamental elements, and negative space. The exercises increase in complexity, later covering horizontal, vertical, and diagonal compositions, and finally explaining the many factors that affect hierarchy. Each of the exercises presents several options that fall within the well-considered constraints of the project. Elam systematically exhausts the design possibilities of each project with well-qualified rationale. Peppered throughout the lessons is analysis of more complex and expressive layouts designed by immortals such as Jan Tschichold and Herbert Bayer, as well as work by contemporary design firms. The analysis of each specimen is accompanied with a vellum overlay page that clearly defines the grid and compositional dynamics of the layout.

"Grid Systems" strips the confusion from the mystery of designing with a grid. It teaches constraint while illustrating the unexpected freedom the grid can afford, and will surely become a required textbook in typography classes everywhere.