The Grid is a system, Neo.

It seems I wasn't the only one in Typography class last night who didn't "get" the whole grid layout concept. After a 5 minute explanation from the teacher, I felt like I had an inkling of understanding. Even though I don't feel completely secure in my knowledge, going from having NO clue to at least SOME clue was huge. I felt like I could suddenly see the Matrix.

For those of you (like me) who are coming from a non-graphic design background, I'll try to explain. Imagine blueprints for a house you're going to build. You've got the square footage, the rooms are all drawn out, and that's the plan. Once the house is built, you are free to renovate and knock down walls if you want. A grid is sort of like a blueprint in the world of page layout. You set your margins, number of columns and their width etc -- then you build your design on top of those standards. That's how I understood it, anyway.

Our prof. said the explanation of grid layout was all in our book. Okaaaay. Granted, I'm not yet 100% done with the reading. However, I read the stuff about grids and to me, it was jibberish. That Typography book is as dry as toast. I fell asleep on top of it at 5 o'clock in the afternoon the other day! I'm a firm believer in going back over the reading material in class - even if it's just a quick overview to see if anyone has questions. Which, clearly, we all did. I learn much better by seeing and doing. Looking over a magazine with the teacher and having him point out the underlying grid patterns helped my brain immensely. I have a starting point now. Now maybe I can make heads or tails of the next two layout assignments. At least I know I'm learning something, right?
Five more weeks of class before summer va-k. (o: