The Armature, the Grid, and Grid System ~ Notes

Grids are essentially.. “frameworks devised to assist hierarchy…”

•  Armatures underly and bind elements … by “intuitively” divided space. Armatures employ principles of alignment, visual proportion, balance and harmony similar to… a satisfying drawing.

• Grids also underlie and bind elements but with structural in addition to visual rules
  governing placement. Example: Newspapers … utilized simple columns to accommodate changing content day to day… helped to order masses of text. Efficiency and accessibility in typography joined the points, lines and
  planes of abstract art. In the end the principles of abstraction proved elemental to grid
  systems.
• Grid systems put similar principles to work except within a calculated program. This
  mechanical plan for the placement of elements typically spans pages.  All areas comprising the sum total of any given space work under the grid’s close supervision.
• Brockmann’s treatise signaled the consummate arrival of “systems thinking” for typographers. Modularity in typographic structure: interconnected small, equal and repeating parts that comprise a whole. “Working with the grid system means submitting to laws of universal validity”

Each whole is the sum total of its configuring parts.