For all those passionate about grids, Wim Crouwel came out with a gem last night that might just help to support any arguments over it’s stature as a key design element.
As one of the fortunate 200 or so creatives that attended Wim Crouwel’s ISTD lecture at The Royal College of Physicians last night, it was a pleasure as always to hear him talk passionately about his background, his work, the role of a designer and his experience as a client, in particular the fruitful relationship he shared with studio 8vo in the late 80’s/early 90s. Hamish Muir introduced Crouwel, and spoke highly of his ‘idol’, talking of the ‘unique’ working relationship they developed, one Crouwel went on to liken to his own relationship with the director of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, under whom he completed some of his finest work.
After explaining the design decisions behind many of his definitive portfolio pieces, his passion for the grid was evident, citing that it is the first thing he designs when starting any project. While many studios these days are keen to distance themselves from the more rigid, grid approach to design, Crouwel in contrast still champions it’s relevance.
Paul Austin, MadeThought’s co-founder stated his position on the subject when talking at a Typographic Circle lecture earlier in the year. ‘New designers come to work with us and I see them spending half a day fannying around with the baseline grid… I don’t know what that is’. ‘We don’t really have grids. We work… by eye.’
In contrast Crouwel relishes the structure a grid offers, and would disagree with any suggestion that it inhibits creative expression. When explaining the role grids play in his work he used a football analogy to get his point across:
“(For me) a grid is like a football pitch. You see a beautiful game of football, and then you see a not so beautiful one, but it all takes place on the same pitch”.
Beautifully put. At that moment he managed to combine two great passions of many designers (certainly that I know) and his argument was that much stronger for it. With imagination and invention the grid needn’t be restrictive, just a platform for expression.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of hearing Crouwel lecture then it is highly recommended.
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Further reading:
http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=176
Your Voice
What do you think? Fill in the form below to submit any discussion points you like to raise and we'll do our best to get a debate going, in the immortal words of Bob Hoskins, it's good to talk.
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My highlight of the talk as well which was excellent as expected. Someone needs to make a proper book of his work with Mode En Module being impossible to get hold of.
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What a brilliant final question that would have made last night.
There were rumours of that happening, but for one reason or another it didn’t happen. Really hoping a publisher takes it on because it would be a huge success.
One thing was that was clear last night is that looking at his recent design output he clearly isn’t ready to hang his letraset up just yet — perhaps this is why an updated Mode en Module hasn’t been produced? I really wanted to ask, given how passionately he spoke, if he felt he had another career defining project in him, but was too slow. Never mind.
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What a great quote!!
If MadeThought don’t use grids, how can they typeset the accounts section of an annual report accurately? On simpler documents I suppose you can use coordinates to place text boxes ect but with the complexity of a report you will struggle to make sure everything is sitting in the right place? If anything grids reduce the risk of errors or inconsistency. They make your life easier.
He’s not talking about not using grids just baseline grids… I don’t use them, I’m not sure I know many designers who do?
I know that this isn’t a post about Made Thought but I found it quite refreshing to read that comment, I personally think designers place too much of an emphasis on grids and rules, people aren’t perfect and I think this should be reflected in design.
Ed.
I have been to two Crouwel lectures now and am familiar with much of his work, but some of the things that he showed in this lecture that really interested me were the photos he used as reference when designing his New Alphabet. They were of tiles on old barn roofs used to write the date of construction and also of the use of bricks to make type on walls. A nice historical reference for something that was so ‘forward’ in its thinking.
Yes, it’s a nice quote. But does it really support an argument that suggests grids have any stature as a ‘key design element’? It seems as if Crouwel is saying quite the opposite - that the grid has little, if any, effect on the work made with it. Playing football on a pitch doesn’t make it a beautiful game. Can you sensibly argue that the grid is both key to design as well as having no influence on it?
Perhaps, to stretch the metaphor further, design is more about the players…
Too many grids & rules makes design a dull boy.
A good parallel – paying too much respect to brand guidelines will generally serve up some consistently unforgettable work.
Wim on the other hand makes it feel endlessly fresh – that’s special.
MadeThought has never struck me as anti grids/baselines etc, though I think understand the sentiment that Mr Austin made. The amount of gridnik work I get in my inbox or see in blogs from young designers can send me to sleep rather promptly.
Blimey, Freudian slurp in the above post.
‘paying too much respect to brand guidelines will generally serve up some consistently ***forgettable*** work.’
Gridniks 1
W Cake 0
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I knew nothing about baselines until I worked at Browns. Now 5 years on and having worked on several annual reports I would never work without one. When setting a 96pp back section of a report it gives me the confidence that everything is consistently sitting in the right place. Otherwise how do you check it? With a type ruler I suppose. Now how many people have one of them in your drawer? Just in case you ask, yes I have one.
We use grids for a number of reasons but one good example is when a number of people are helping out on the one document. If you have set up a grid and baseline grid and 4 months into a 5 month project you take a 2 week holiday (for example), when you come back, open the document, put your guides and grid on, you can instantly see if anything is out of place. You can quickly skim through to make sure everything is snapping to the grid and all the type is sitting on the baseline grid. This is a very quick and effective way of checking what the freelancer has been doing to your document over the last 2 weeks. You are then confident that everything is in the right place and your not going to have the client on the phone demanding a reprint.
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Stephen I think you took Paul Austin’s (deliberately provocative) quote too literally. I worked at MadeThought for a few years and of course we used grids for books and catalogues. We didn’t design annual reports which is where I suspect Browns and MadeThought differ, and their approach to grids differ. I think what Paul was getting at was that by focussing too much attention to devising a grid structure, there’s the possibility that a level of creative expression is lost early on in the process. If you look at any Established & Sons catalogue you can appreciate the strong typography and original layouts, all of which would not benefit at all from the use of baseline grids.
I have to say I’m with Paul to a certain extent - in my opinion too many young designers think that with a clever grid and a bit of Helvetica they can create a modernist masterpiece. But to me that’s just boring.
For me an example of designers using grids in interesting way would be Mevis & Van Deursen. They always strike me as using grids in quite a fluid and playful manner.
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[...] OK I just can’t not link to Design Assembly’s post about design-hero Wim Crouwel’s ISTD [...]
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Tom, knowing your work and MadeThoughts’ work well I have no doubt that the work produced uses a grid.
I see a grid as a more of a utilitarian aid to design. It can be used in a number of ways to create a number of different outcomes. If its use is relevant or helpful with what you are designing.
I’m mainly sticking up for the use of a baseline grid on a practical level not a creative one.
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I am with Tom on this one, you get a lot of younger designers who have immersed themselves in grids and modernity but when I make them move away from that and try something else, they fall to pieces. There’s jobs where you need it and those where you don’t. I have only used a baseline grid once in the last year and that was where it needed to be. I think this analogy holds up as a football pitch is a restricted area but there are endless possibilities to how you play in it.
Agree M+VD use grid’s in a very beautiful way Tom.
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I’ve just come back from a day at the races and am delighted to see that one of the shortest articles on Design Assembly has thrown up such an interesting debate. Good to see so many people feel passionately about this subject, and of course Mr Crouwel.
Frank — my interpretation of his quote is that while both a beautiful and an ugly game of football can be played, the one constant is the pitch they are played upon. It is the players imagination on that pitch that determines which it is. Basically he is suggesting that a grid is key (you can’t play football without it) and that it is your inhibitions as a designer that will affect your creativity, not the frame within which you design.
Crouwel was speaking of his posters when the relevance of grids was made, so he was specifically referring to hanging points (horizontal and vertical columns with gutters), though I see no reason why his statement could not include Baseline grids.
My position is clear — each and every job has a grid of some description, it’s appearance and function (Baseline or hanging points) dependant on the requirements of the job at hand. As Stephen has pointed out an annual report demands the rigid structure a baseline grid provides, but a poster would requires a more flexible approach. It’s also worth remembering that the grid is of the designers creation and can be as functional and or flexible as their imagination allows.
Either way, I loved Crouwels analogy because it helped simplify a much more complicated issue that I have often struggled to communicate. It certainly isn’t a question of Crouwel v Made Thought, I merely used Paul Austin’s quote as another perspective from what is one of the most creative and revered agencies out there.
I whole heartedly agree with Toms point about young designers and grids though — I much prefer to see graduates and juniors who are making mistakes through exploration without concern of the consequences, developing concepts and learning idea based communication. Grids are a skill I developed well after University (and am still learning) and I now feel much more comfortable to combine the two, but think as a junior I would have allowed the grid to design for me, as opposed to the other way around.
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I think i agree with Frank on this one, purely because Crouwel talks of beauty and not necessity, but as with any good metaphor it has the flexibility to suite many interpretations.
If he is indeed hinting that a grid can display both good and poor executions, then this is something not many would disagree with. As Matt and Tom have already mentioned, grids can lead to predictable work - in that some find the a temptation to follow a well known style hard to resist. But to further Matts final point, I find it more concerning when a grid is used as an excuse not to design in a more expressive manner, or where the design is hampered by rigidly following its structure. Brand guidelines can be particularly guilty of causing this outcome; it’s a shame in a way, because it comes from a combination of some not wanting to give others enough rope to hang themselves, and the others not having the confidence to create.
The article mentions that a grid is the first thing Crouwel designs on a project; it would be interesting to also hear the approaches taken to grids and projects from the other designers on this blog, perhaps even through an article. It seems that over the years and from working with various different people, attitudes to grids and processes can become very individualistic. The grid may be the first thing Crouwel designs but that’s not to say it won’t evolve before the projects completion.
I agree with the comments about flexibility. Content throughout a project can change drastically, even stylistic changes are sometimes demanded, meaning that the grid you start with is not often the one sent to press. Therefore Tom hit the nail on the head with: “there’s the possibility that a level of creative expression is lost early on in the process”, with regards to young designers focusing on grids too intently. Often the grids not the solution, just its framework.
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