This two part exercise aims to understand the relationship between typography, the grid, and the page in more depth by analysing existing layouts and creatively developing alternative ones. Both of these activities will feed into assignment three.
Understanding layouts
Research into book layouts that you find interesting. These could be art or design books, or others that have more complex layouts that balance images, typography and other content across multiple columns.
Trace the grid structure of your chosen double-page spread using tracing paper and a sharp pencil. Measure the margins, column width and depth, plus spaces between the columns. Transcribe the tracing onto a clean sheet of paper, drawing on the measurements. Compare your drawings to other double-page spreads within the same publication. Identify the similarities and differences – is there an underlying grid system and how does it adapt to deal with different content?
Now recreate the same double-page spread using DTP software. Use your traced drawing measurements as a guide.
There is no need to copy out all the text – you can use ‘dummy’ text or ‘blurb’ such as l orem ipsum. Lorem ipsum is Latin text which has a distribution of letters that make it look like readable English. You can download some from http://www.lipsum.com and incorporate it into your layout.
Similarly, there is no need to recreate the images – indicate images by a 10% shaded area, whether these are cut-out, full-bleed or within a box.
Try to match the typeface as closely as possible. It doesn’t need to be exactly the same, but try to retain something of the original – for example, make sure you use a sans-serif font if the original is sans-serif.
Experimental layouts
“These conditioned patterns of reading, from left to right or top to bottom for example, allow us to approach any form of printed material with some expectation of how we will navigate through it. This, then, is the starting point for the designer, who is able to build upon this familiarity within the layout and format of a project, often utilising the element of surprise or difference to confound the reader or user’s expectations.”
Russ Bestley & Ian Noble, E xperimental Layout, 2001. Hove: Rotovision.
Extend the project by thinking about how you might radically change these layouts – what creative decisions around the grid would you make to improve these designs? Develop layout ideas that ignore the grid structure, challenge it, or offer radical alternatives to the existing layouts. Develop a range of ideas through thumbnail drawings and DTP layouts, in a similar way to the first part of the exercise. Use this as an opportunity to take creative risks, and find radically different ways to layout the existing content. This process might challenge any preconceived rules about how a layout should normally work. Reflect on the process in your learning log.
Analysing existing layouts
For this part of the exercise, I chose ‘Folk Art Style’ by Sybil Edwards.
The reason that I chose this book is because of the amount of images in the book, it doesn’t follow any particular rules.
Based on one of the pages, I set up a spread in Indesign.
Different types of grids
There are many ways to set up a page layout and really depends on a function of the design.
Experimental
I made some thumbnails in Procreate. I’ve chosen one and made a layout based on that in Indesign.
Self – Reflection
This was an interesting exercise as I realized that there are many different grid layouts specially if I want to break the rules. Besides, there are more elements need to be considered in design like, Typography, hierarchy, composition.
What I need to work on is to collect more example of different layouts and research about their functions. There are some grid layouts that might not work for a specific function.
Resources
- Glorify. Grids in designing: Types of Grids for Professional Designs. At: https://www.glorify.com/learn/grids-in-designing. (Accessed: 01/07/2022)
- Medium. Grid layout in design. At: https://medium.com/manabie/grid-layout-in-design-7c462a9b44d0. (Accessed: 01/07/2022)
- Seeking. Type of grids. At: https://www.seekpng.com/ipng/u2t4i1w7r5w7u2i1_types-of-grids-different-types-of-grid-pattern/. (Accessed: 01/07/2022).
Maryam: OCA Graphic Design 