What everyone should know about grids

Used by professional designers for years, the grid layout has taken the yearbook industry by storm.

What’s still the same?

• Follow column widths for horizontal measurements of photos and copy.
• Maintain a consistent one pica internal margin between primary elements.
• Establish a dominant photo and eyeline.
• Caption each photo and place caption next to photo

What’s New?

• Body copy and captions do not have to maintain the same column width. The width of copy can be three columns wide while the captions are all two columns wide.
• Headlines are not restricted to the width of the body copy block. In fact, the bigger the better seems to be the style.
• Dropped columns (i.e., leaving a blank grid between copy and the dominant photo) are no longer bad news. White space is essential. Today’s grid layouts even use double and triple spaced copy and caption blocks.