The Grid

The International Typographic Style brought with it the first usage of grid systems used by graphic designers to organise their content into an underlying mathematical structure. This grid helped the Swiss to produce a unique style which encompassed simplicity, clean typography and elegance.

Jan Tschichold's Die Neue Typographie was a modernist manifesto where he advocated the use of only sans-serif fonts and explored the use of the grid to aid the graphic designer and to help them control the outcome of their compositions.

















Above: Van de Graaf canon, a system used in book design to achieve good proportions, this was made popular by The Form of the Book by Jan Tschichold.
















Above: The diagram shows the proportions in a medieval manuscript. Jan Tschichold: "Page proportions 2:3. Margin proportions 1:1:2:3. Text area proportioned in the Golden Section."

The Modern Grid

After the second World War graphic designers who were key in the development of the Swiss style such as Emil Ruder, Max Bill and Josef Muller-Brockmann started to experiment with grids as a reaction to the layout construction of the time. They were heavily influenced by the work of Jan Tschichold and his examination of book layouts. These graphic designers began to develop system that would be flexible enough to allow for some freedom and structured enough to give organisation and hierarchy of information. These explorations of page layout led to the appearance of the modern typographic grid, this grid system became a major influence on the layouts produced with the International Typographic Style. A book entitled Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Muller-Brockmann helped to spread the knowledge and usefulness of the modern grid to Europe and eventually North America.