- Informal Grids
- This is a review of informal grids and how to use them.
Informal Grids
The use of informal grids is the main purpose of this assignment. Informal grids are created as you sketch your pages. They don’t have the rhythmic structure the other types of grids have. There aren’t repeating columns. Elements simply align with each other on the page.
What Are They Good For?
These are best used for single-page designs like an invitation, a sign or a poster. We’d never use this type of grid for a whole publication.
How do they work?
Your page is the canvas you have to work with. Remember that in the west, our eyes travel on the page from the top left to the bottom right. What we want to do is direct the eye more specifically by aligning page elements to each other. The goal is to create visual flow on the page.
As we build our layout, we create hierarchy for each element using size, weight, etc… Once each element is styled, we place the most important one thoughtfully on the page. From there, we can place the other elements in order of descending importance.
In the example above, you can see that the main title logically takes the lead in the layout. The two remaining elements align with it. You can see how, even with so few elements, we’ve achieved harmony on the page.
It’s also obvious that the process of creating a layout in this manner is too tedious for long multi-page publications. That’s what modular grids are for.
These are some variables you can work with to achieve hierarchy;
- size
- weight
- width
- case
- tints & shades
- strokes
- columns
- diagonal
- italics
- reversed
- tracking