504 - Type in Context - Grids & Cannons

Grids are an essential part of editorial design designed to provide consistency throughout the various pages of the publication. Referencing the 'Graphic Design: The New Basics' Book, the grid creates guidelines which help us to align the elements in relation to eachother. Consistent margins and columns create an underlying structure that unifies the pages of a document and makes the layout process more efficient. A well-made grid encourages the designer to vary the scale and placement of elements without relying wholly on judgement. The grid offers a rationale and a starting point for each composition, converting a blank area into a structured field. I will definitely be applying one to my work, even though I am thinking about quite a minimal layout for each page to display a large scale image, it will help me keep structure of the page flow and the alignment of text in appropriate sections.

Last year we touched upon page canons of construction but for this brief I need to fully consider the construction of each in this book. Canons are systems and when applied in graphic design, it is about the organisation of type and image on a page. Canons allow you to easily construct a book and offer consistency throughout the production. During a lecture for this brief, we looked into Jan Tschichold's laws on producing a book and how he believed certain ratios are perfect for book production. So for this part of research I look into famous canons / ratios, and why Tschichold believes they are the best.

Van Der Graaf Canon
The Van de Graaf canon also known as the "secret canon". The canon works for any page width:height ratio and enables designers to position text body in a specific area of a page. Using the canon, the proportions are maintained while creating pleasing and functional margins of size 1/9 and 2/9 of the page size. This method was discovered by Van de Graaf, and used and popularised by Tschichold and other contemporary designers. The page proportions vary, but most commonly used is the 2:3 proportion which Tschichold thinks works the best. In this canon the text area and page size are of same proportions, and the height of the text area equals the page width. One problem of this canon is that it is based around type and not image which may cause a problem for the margins. 



Golden Canon

Tschichold's "golden canon of page construction" is based on simple ratios, its the equivalent of Rosarivo's typographical divine proportion. Rosarivo's work established the the harmonic relationships between the diverse parts of a piece of work, Tschihold interprets Rosarivo's work by relying on the 2:3 page ratio to give a type area height equal to page width as demonstrated by the circle above.