
34
ANATOMY OF DESIGN
The constructive grid is an indispensable foundation for two-dimensional design.
As an armature, it allows the designer to order type and image with
mathematical precision and implement clear and effective visual hierarchies.
Although grids existed in painting before the Renaissance and in commercial art
were used in an ad hoc manner from around the turn of the twentieth century,
the technique wasn't formally recognized until the 1920s, when constructivism,
de Stijl, and the Bauhaus introduced it as a holy grail of rational practice.
Another two decades passed before the Swiss school of the early 1950s
codified it in the design journal ...