Composition and layout

Member lesson

Breaking the grid on purpose

Lesson 16 of 27 in Composition and layout.

Wolfgang Weingart: 2013 AIGA Medalist · AIGAdesign
Lesson

By the mid-1970s the Swiss grid of the last lesson was standard teaching across Europe, North America and much of Latin America, and its look had been adopted wholesale as the voice of corporate communication. The reaction came in the early 1980s, aimed less at the grid than at its dogmatic use and the company it kept. Wolfgang Weingart en.wikipedia.org, teaching at the Basel School of Design from 1968, is credited with developing the approach that became New Wave en.wikipedia.org.

12 columns · 8px gutterspans 5spans 6
A twelve-column grid with gutters, and a block spanning five columns.
Two pages: a neat grid with one tilted red block that stands out, and a chaotic page of tilted blocks where the red one disappears.
On a tidy grid one tilted block grabs the eye; on a page where everything is tilted, the same block gets lost. A break only works when the grid around it holds.
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  1. Question 1, locked

    When does breaking the grid read as deliberate rather than sloppy?

    • When the grid has been established firmly enough that the break is legible as one
    • When more than one element breaks it
    • When the break is small
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “One element placed off the structure, on a page where everything else obeys it.”

    • Ranged left
    • Exception
    • Isolation
    • Fluid canvas
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “The typography that set out to defy strict grid arrangement: uneven letterspacing, weights changing inside a word, type set off the right angle. Also called Swiss Punk.”

    • Module
    • One idea
    • Apophenia
    • New Wave

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