Grid System Session

Today we had a session on grid systems, specifically about being able to un-pick a grid from magazine spreads, to help us understand and come up with our own grid systems.

I took 2 double page spreads from 2 of the magazines I used for my type hierarchies, The Economist and Total Film, and unpicked their grid systems.

The Economist

Total Film

What I notice from these two magazines is that generally they're 2 column systems, but sometimes the inside column is thicker than the outside column, by roughly a ratio of 2:1, which is strange, as I would assume that if 2 columns were split in that way, it'd make more sense to use a 3 column grid. This, I suppose is done to accommodate the images more to give more room for manoeuvring when it comes to images without them looking out of place from place to place. 

Also, whilst I appreciate that these grids aren't exactly modular, generally they're set up in 3 rows, although they're variable across the spread. This is particularly re-assuring, as in the previous task that required us to produce double page spreads, I often struggled to line up text and images in the rows given that the columns are fixed.