Grid layout book recommendations

November 29, 2005 5:16 PM

Any recommendations for books on grid layout systems for print?
posted by spyke23 to media & arts (5 comments total)

Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type and tangentially, Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition, both by Kimberly Elan. The page proportion diagrams and tables in Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style are useful also.
posted by Dean King at 5:40 PM on November 29, 2005

Dean King pretty much nails it. All great books.

You might also consider The Design of Books by Adrian Wilson and (if you have a few hundred bucks to drop), Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Muller-Brockman.
posted by Jeff Howard at 6:53 PM on November 29, 2005

I second the Elam book. I also like Making and Breaking the Grid by Timothy Samara.
posted by O9scar at 6:59 PM on November 29, 2005

Ruari McLean's Thames & Hudson Manual of Typography has a lot of excellent guidelines, too, especially in terms of relating page grid to type, as does Robert Bringhurst's book, as recommended by Dean above. Ellen Lupton's very recent Thinking With Type: A Critical Guide also does this in a context perhaps easier for an amateur / nondesigner / student to understand. And of course the Allen Hurlburt book Layout is also good, but I don't think there's been a new edition in quite awhile.
posted by luriete at 9:25 AM on November 30, 2005

Ah yes, Hurlburt. Grid: A Modular System for the Design and Production of Newpapers, Magazines, and Books is a good overview and history, although a little dated now (1978).
posted by Dean King at 9:54 AM on November 30, 2005