OUGD403 STUDIO BRIEF 2 - GRIDS SEMINAR

Today we had a short seminar covering some of the fundamental basics of grids. This is what I learned:

• If the gutter in a body of text is x, then the margin must be 2x, hypothetically speaking. 
• The golden ratio and the rule of thirds are both very important.
• The Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio can be applied to most artwork, such as the mona lisa to the pepsi logo. It forms the basis of paper sizes and can be used to produce balanced designs. Ancient cultures such as the Greek and Egyptians used the Fibonacci sequence to gain beautifully designed proportions. The human face was deemed to follow the golden ratio, and those whose face most closely fit within it, was deemed more beautiful than those whose face didn't. Renaissance art was based on the golden ratio, every body part, including the fingers, was painted using it. The only fault was that you could adapt anything and say it fitted within the golden ratio, when realistically it didn't. 
• Canons and the principles of page layout design was used to measure and describe proportions and margins.
• Van de Graaf (the secret cannon) was an exceptional grid theorist
• Jan Tschichold (golden cannon, Octavo) was also a grid theorist whose work was used in penguin books.
• Joseph Muller Brochman, Massimo Vignelli and Matthew Tucker are also grid experts.
• Grids are most obvious, and easy to see in layout designs, whether that be in magazines, websites, or in phone apps.
• Finally, generally there are 7 words per line, as thats the ideal amount of letters across the eye can easily read, too many and the eye gets tired, too few and the eye gets dizzy.

All of this newfound information has been really useful to me, and I now must go away and research further into grids and grid designers and grid theories and technicalities.