WEEK 10 | Lupton "Grid" Response

Lupton's last chapter in "Thinking With Type" describes grids and their importance to all forms of graphic design, both print and web based.

"For graphic designers, grids are carefully honed intellectual devices, infused with ideology and ambition, and they are the inescapable mesh that filters at some level of resolution, nearly every system of writing and reproduction." (113)

Grids are essential for guiding design - whether ordering items, or breaking the order. Magazines and newspapers exist on grid systems in order to create consistent environments that are functional and reproducible.

Food for thought: can breaking the grid also create a sense of order since breaking a grid will still be done in predictable ways?

Lupton also write about the power of grids in magazine and print design and the evolution of the grid in web design through tables and Cascading Style Sheets and the more free form environment afforded by the use of Flash.

THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT
Find an example of a grid system being used in print or on the web. You examples can come from magazines, web sites or newspapers... THEN, write about it by answering the fol questions:

1. Discuss the grid system in place. How well do the designs work within the boundaries, or even by breaking boundaries of the grid?
2. How does the grid in your example aid the reader or user?
3. Does it engage them with its structure or lack thereof?
4. Does it cause tension, either positive or negative?

Attach screen shots, links or images in order to help illustrate your example.

Screen capture on a MAC:
Apple Key + Shift + 3

Screen capture on a PC:
Hit the "Print Screen" button (usually found on the top right of the keyboard);

CITATION: The inspiration and content for this post is borrowed heavily from a similar assignment given by Prof. Greg Hedges in GRA 617.