Layout
Craft
What a grid is actually for
A grid is not a device for making things line up. Things lining up is a side effect. A grid is a device for making the hundredth layout decision as cheap as the first one.
The cost curve of a long project
On the first three pages of any project you can place elements by eye and it will look fine. By page thirty you are making decisions that contradict decisions you made on page four and have forgotten. By page eighty the whole thing has drifted and the only fix is to go back through all of it.
The grid exists to stop the drift. It is a set of prior decisions that hold while your attention is elsewhere, which on a long project is most of the time.
Columns are the least interesting part
Most grid conversations get stuck on column counts. Twelve, sixteen, whatever. Far more consequential are the vertical rhythm, the relationship between the type size and the baseline unit, and the rule for what happens at the edges. Those are the decisions that make a system feel considered or arbitrary.
I usually set the baseline unit first, derive the type scale from it, and only then work out how many columns the content actually needs. Nine times out of ten it needs fewer than the default.
Know which rule you are breaking
Breaking the grid is fine and often necessary. But there is a difference between a break that reads as emphasis and a break that reads as a mistake, and the difference is entirely whether everything around it is holding. You can only break one rule at a time. Break two and the reader stops being able to tell that either was deliberate.
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I take on a limited number of projects each quarter so every one gets my full attention. Tell me what you’re building and let’s see if we’re a fit.
