- I wish there were only one way
to make a successful grid structure.
It would be much easier to explain
if I could say "Do this. And this.
And it will work."
But the types of information we encounter
are so varied that this is impossible.
You need multiple grid concepts
to work with many types of content.
Sometimes, this variation in content
exists in one publication.
Think of a magazine, for example.
Magazines have monthly articles
that are the same in each issue,
and features in the center of the magazine
that can be different each time.
If all the content used the exact same grid,
the magazine would lose the delineation between these.
Proportions are at the core of employing
multiple grids in one publication.
I can design a grid with eight columns
for monthly articles, and four for the features.
The hang lines on each can change,
but I make sure I'm working with divisions
or multiples of the same units.
I also maintain the same margins
and place for page numbers on both structures.
Now, bear with me. This is the math part.
If a monthly article's grid has eight columns
that are 5 Picas wide, and the hang lines
are 7 Picas apart, I base the feature's grid
on the same measurements.
But the feature's grid has only four columns.
These columns are 11 Picas across.
The column widths relate to each other mathematically.
I can apply different rules to each structure.
On the monthly column grid,
images can be a maximum of 4 columns wide.
Text must stay within 2 columns.
A solid bar runs across the top
of all monthly column pages,
and all the content hangs from the same hang line.
The grid in the feature sections has less columns,
and I allow myself to run text
across as many columns as I want.
I also lay out images to bleed off the page.
Keep the grids together in a publication.
Rather than mixing them together,
I will use one structure at the beginning,
and one at the end.
Going back and forth can be too jarring
and confusing for the reader.
Some publications demand a level of gravity.
A document on the fiscal budget
is better suited to a one-grid approach.
But when the content needs to be presented dynamically,
across many pages with differing types of content,
two or three-grid structures are a great tool.