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The Nitty-Griddy of Design

Rhythm is central to any musical piece; it gives structure to an otherwise unordered melody. Graphic and Web design rely on rhythm, too, only in more of a visual form: grids. Whether rigid, loose, crowded or sparse, grids not only provide order, but also reinforce the piece's overall message.

Think about your company and the messages you'd like to convey. The right rhythm, translated into a grid, says a lot about who you are. Is a steel manufacturer, with its repetition and exacting precision, more like a Sousa march or a Chopin waltz? Would a pharmaceutical company, on which millions of people rely for daily health, identify best with a song everybody knows or the newest experimental avant-garde composition? Should a company that manufactures paint for your home identify more with Enya or Metallica? Would that same paint manufacturer establish a different rhythm for its industrial coatings business?

Graphic designers take what they know about the character and goals of a company and devise a visual rhythm that – whether or not you consciously notice it – establishes a form for precision, reliability, creativity, innovation or whatever that company is hoping to communicate.

For example, the packaging we recently designed for Philips (above) gets its simple yet sophisticated feel from the uncluttered grid that runs throughout. A more rigid, predictable grid – like the one we used for Mylan's 2007 annual report (below) – can convey reliability, whereas the looser design of the 2005 annual report for the Greater Pittsburgh Council Boy Scouts of America (below) communicates a playful, fun message. At first glance, it may even appear that the latter publication lacks a grid altogether, but it is the grid that anchors and holds together the many different elements of the report. This anchoring effect is essential to keeping lengthy projects – like the 200-page book we designed for Carnegie Mellon University's Highlands Circle – organized and flowing.

Grids also can play a big role in connecting different communications pieces – such as Web sites, brochures, letterhead and multimedia presentations – for the same brand. Although the same exact grid may not function well for both a business card and an annual report, a family of related grids can be used to achieve continuity.

The grid as we know it arose shortly after World War II when a number of graphic designers, influenced by the modernist ideas of Jan Tschichold's Die neue Typographie (The New Typography), began to question the relevance of the conventional page layout of the time. The result was a system that gives order and coherency to a design, yet is flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of styles and tones: the modern typographic grid.

In fact, this focus on organizing information in useful ways and setting a distinctive tone for clients' communications led us at Brady Communications to choose a simple grid design for our logo. Derived from the Swiss design heritage, the grid of our logo reflects our strategic, problem-solving approach to our clients' communications.

Whatever it is that you need to communicate, there's a grid that can help. In fact, the right grid will work just as hard for your organization as more obvious elements such as copy and color palettes – even if your target audience never even notices it.

   

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