Making and Breaking the Grid

Thoughts on Structure:An Introduction

For some graphic designers, it has become an unquestioned part of the working process that yields precision, order, and clarity.

For others, it is symbolic of Old Guard aesthetic oppression, a stifling cage that hinders the search for expression.

The typographic grid is an organizing principle in graphic design whose influence is simultaneously ingrained in current practice and fought over in design education, revered and reviled for the absolutes inherent in its conception.

It is a principle with roots in the oldest societies on the planet. Eking out an existence with some kind of meaning—and creating an understandable order for that meaning—is one of the activities that distinguishes our species from all ...