grids

why do we as designers use grids?

what are the benefits or functions?

look around you.  grids are everywhere--the tiles on the floor, the table set-up in a restaurant, the lines in the parking lot, city blocks.  grids are an essential part of our everyday life.  they keep things looking clean and organized, and aesthetically pleasing.  this is also much of the reason that we as designers use grids in our own work.  not only does it make communicating the message easier, but is visually satisfying.  if everything is scattered and un-aligned, someone is much less likely to want to read it or even so, look at it.  

there are many benefits to using a grid.  it helps us to organize our work so that it is easily readable and interesting to look at.   even if it wasn't a requirement, i would prefer to use a grid because you can lay things out and really get a good balance on the whole page.  

just looking at this movie poster of helvetica, you can see that some sort of a grid was used.  the "v-e-t" is offset but still helps to balance the rest of the words out and make for a very interesting and fun design.

sources:  

http://www.markboulton.co.uk/articles/detail/why_use_a_grid/

http://walkingdisaster8.blogspot.com