project 02a :: reading response

We read an excerpt of Book Design by Andrew Haslam and the "Structure and Integration" section from Timothy Samara's Publication Design Workbook to better enhance our knowledge of publication design as we begin this photo narrative project with The Comparison Project and Drake Community Press.

The two main ideas I took away from this reading were:

•  a better understanding of format: the relationship between the length and width of the page (i.e. portrait, landscape, or square)
• an appreciation for the mathematics that go into grids: the underlying structure of a page that includes margin widths, columns, gutters, and the baseline grid for type

While reading, I was impressed by the number of ways a designer can go about designing a page. From Samara's book, I wrote down this quote: "There's a message. There's a visual concept conveying that message. And there's a way of organizing the concept around the message within a given space."

The trick is to decide how to best organize your content on the page. Should you let the page dictate how your content is viewed? Or should you let your content determine the format of the page? Should you build the grid and then fit the type in? Or should you build the grid based on the structure of the type?

Publication design can be highly mathematical, which is something I've never fully realized. But the more I learn, the more I appreciate the work and the trial and error the designers put into creating pages that fit their content well and allow the viewer to engage with the content in the way it needs to be engaged with.

I am excited to develop a grid system as a class for this publication; I realize from the readings that grids are the best way to ensure continuity in the midst of a collaborative project. However, I was challenged by this quote, also from the Samara reading, "The greatest danger in using a grid is to succumb to its regularity."

I'm looking forward to putting these theories into practice!