Goal

The goal of this exer­cise is to intro­duce the com­plex­i­ties and vari­ables asso­ci­ated with multi col­umn grid devel­op­ment and layout.

Objective

Cre­ate a grid and assigned com­po­si­tions using Kane’s pro­ce­dure and a type­face selected from the AFFEE collection.

Background Reading

• Bringhurst, p 143–178
• Kane, p 178–226
• San­toro: Chap­ter 7, p 181–214 and Chap­ter 8, p 215–238
• Hill PDF’s

Assignment

Find three dynamic and engag­ing images from the Glyphish Icon Set. Write a com­pli­men­tary head­line to sup­pli­ment your image, and col­lect or write a 200 word sup­port­ing essay. No restric­tions are placed on the sub­ject or sources as long as honor code and pla­garism guide­lines are fol­lowed. Using a selected type­face, assigned text, and the assigned read­ing (pri­mar­ily begin­ning on page 212), use InDe­sign or sim­i­lar page lay­out soft­ware to develop a grid for gen­eral use.

Final page size is 8.5 x 11 in land­scape or por­trait. Use the “Fill with Place­holder Text” instead of retyp­ing the text for a text ruler. Cre­ate set­tings head­line, sub­head, body copy and cap­tion in the course of cre­at­ing base­line based sys­tem. Leave the text ruler on the page as a ref­er­ence. To com­plete the assign­ment, cre­ate a PDF from File > Adobe PDF Presents > [Press Qual­ity]. Click save with appro­pri­ate file name. In the next dia­logue box, under Gen­eral >Include please select “Non-print­ing Objects” and “Vis­i­ble Guides and Grids.” The result­ing file should have lines rep­re­sent­ing grids and guides.

The Kane book focuses on the following:

• Image size sug­gests var­i­ous options for columns.
• Proper text set­ting, based on type­face, spac­ing, align­ment, and ideal line length, are also a fac­tor in col­umn width.
• Hor­i­zon­tal ratios, and there­fore grid, is based on col­umn width. Make assump­tions on gut­ters, as a mul­ti­ple of text lead­ing in ems.
• Mar­gins can be set in a gen­eral unit, or with units based on lead­ing from ideal text settings.
• Cre­at­ing a “type ruler” helps to estab­lish other parameters.
• Sup­ple­men­tal text is set at a unit of pri­mary text. Units should reflect each other and cross align every few lines.

Save the author­ing file to use the same grid on a future exer­cise. Print the PDF file (with grid lines) and then save the same PDF in the appro­pri­ate D2L drop­box. Do not print the file and grid directly from InDesign.

• The fol­low­ing rubric posted on D2L will deter­mine exer­cise score: Exer­cise Grading

Techniques

Fibonacci sequence, type­face selec­tion, lead­ing, PDF creation

Supplies

Adobe Font Folio Edu­ca­tion Essen­tials, Adobe InDe­sign or sim­i­lar page lay­out soft­ware, Acro­bat Distiller