Customer Reviews

Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

What a strange publication. Divided into two sections the first explaining grid formatting with actual printed material and the second revealing how to design print without a grid.

There seems a contradiction here because the grid, used intelligently, will allow a whole range of graphic options to be presented with clarity. Some of the print examples reproduced in the first section do show this with perhaps the most useful item a grid thumbnail for each piece, unfortunately I thought it was rather too small as it is the key to explaining each format. From past experience, designing magazines, I would start work on a grid by concentrating on the text type size because it is the least flexible of all the elements on the page. This point really wasn't made enough of in the book's chapter: Grid Basics.

The reproductions show a reasonable range of design solutions, essentially print though there is an example of corporate signage. Missing are magazines (consumer or trade) timetables and the like. Without a grid this type of printed matter really wouldn't exist.

The book's contradiction, to my mind, start with the second section: Grid Deconstructions and Non-Grid-Based Design Projects. The forty items shown seem to have a couple of common threads: their design is essentially arbitrary which makes them look very messy and frequently their typography (display and text) is used as a design element which makes the words unreadable. Their design is the opposite of grid stimulated creativity, in other words visual chaos.

Some of the examples are quite amazing. On page 180-181 twelve pages of a calendar are shown, totally useless as its impossible to see the days and dates. Pages 188-189 show eight spreads from a design school journal showing irregular shaped blocks of text creating a sort of collage. I doubt anyone made the effort to read any of it. What is interesting about this second section material is that so much of it comes from educational establishments. In the real world all this designer whimsy would be rejected by the client on sight of the first dummy

'Making and Breaking the Grid' is well printed with 175dpi and the layout is adequate and for a book about grids you would have thought its own grid would have been included but it is strangely missing. Overall I felt that because the contents present two opposite design ideals the book's editorial concept is rather flawed.

From my experience there is only one book that really explains it all: Muller-Brockmann's `Grid Systems' (ISBN 3721201450) published in Switzerland and full of good solid practical hands-on information. This book's only purpose is creative clarity.

I'm bet none of the other reviewers have actually read this book. I'll further bet no one has with its turgid prose and small low contrast type, usually set against a colored background. Here's a small example, selected purely at random, page 112: "Collage was another new visual analogy that built on the reenvisioning of form begun in Cubism, which juxtaposed found images in dynamic relationships where chance could play a role in the perception of meaning." If you're the sort than enjoys sifting meaning from tangles like that, you'll find it here in most every sentence. The other seven billion of us will want clarity. It is an attractive book; as a coffee table decoration it'll impress visitors waiting in your reception. But nobody, including you, will actually read it. If you must, buy it used.

This is a developed look at handling type and page (surface) layout in a simple-yet-abstract way. Using grids and ideas presented in this book (with some practise), the learning designer can begin to utilise elements once thought as simple and static in ways which add dynamism to your layouts.

For a designer such as myself, a fan of Swiss and Bauhaus, simplicity, directness, Making and Breaking the Grid is a book full of idea and potential. Although not radical per se, it is a concise look at one of the most powerful aspects of communication design out there, in my opinion. Definitely worth a look.

This book is great for young inspiring designers to use as a learning tool and reference book. It shows how to make a grid system work and how to modify different styles of grids to a designers particular needs. The book is less in content and more focusing on showing images of the grid at work. This is a must have book and the price is well worth it.

i have seen so many books talk about grid,
most of them are too dry, either only have the imagry or just the grid itself,
this is the book would totally show me how is the grid being create, use and how the break it when it comes to layout.
check it out!

This is not a full review of the book. It is an initial caveat to purchasers. If you are the sort of graphic designer who is mightily impressed by references to the 'poststructural French philospher Rene Foucault' (reproduced with original spelling from page 117 of the book) then you will find this highly stimulating, and admire the pretty pictures.

If, on the other hand, you find such ignorance laughable, or feel that a half-decent writer (never mind editor) should catch such howlers, then you may have pause for thought. It is a philosophical issue, of course: some believe that graphic design should have such contempt for mere words that they can be ignored, set in Dingbats or otherwise mutilated. Such an opinion is, however, not entirely in accord with many designers referenced in this book. A deliberate contradiction on the part of the author? I don't think so.

So, shoddily edited, but looks nice.