THE GRID CONCEPT is from the German Bauhaus design school (1919-1933) The Bauhaus believed industrial potentials were to be applied to satisfactory graphic design standards, regarding both functional and aesthetic aspects.
The Grid concept affected all design fields from architecture to product packaging. This invisible grid is consistent from page to page and consists of rows and columns. It is the skeleton for the design.
Breaking the grid causes tension in the viewer. Project limitations (time, budget, energy) define what page format will influence the invisible typographic grid. The grid is a structural layout tool. Some grid patterns work best for certain formats, like 12-columns on a newspaper. A grid produces beautiful books, brochures, magazines, and websites.
Grids make it possible to bring all the elements of design typography, photography, and drawings into harmony with each other. When telling a story sequentially, over a series of pages, contrast is needed on the overall sequence as well as on the page. Two opposites: the need for order and the need for variety are needed. Without order, the reader is likely to become tired, frustrated, or bewildered by an overabundance of details. Yet without variety, the reader may become bored, overwhelmed, or numbed by too much repetition.
