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Golden ratio grid for A4 landscape posters?

Guest
Feb 22, 2012 Feb 22, 2012

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Hello!

I gotta do this A4 landscape poster in InDesign - but all tutorials I found on gridding A4s (Setting up a baseline grid in InDesign, The Complex Grid, Five simple steps to designing grid systems etc.) only involve portrait-oriented ones.

- How many rows and columns do I need?

- How to make these follow the golden ratio?

- Does the fact that this is a poster and not a regular page with headlines and texts change anything?

Thanks!

--Dwayne

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Community Expert ,
Feb 22, 2012 Feb 22, 2012

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The Golden Ratio is not a Golden Rule, but more of an advice. It deals with proportions between text and margins, and so one would assume the page orientation does not matter.

I don 't think the Golden Ratio is the most important thing in the world -- there is no reason to assume *everything* in print should abide by it. You are correct in your observation. the examples only show pages with plain text and headlines, that is where it's ar it best (for whatever value you like to assign to "best").

Your poster looks fine. For such a large white space, I would center the text block both horizontally and vertically; it's hard to see on your image, but it *looks* to be slightly off in both directions. Alternatively, you could move it vertically off the center, not by a small amount but by a lot (as they say, "piss or get off the pot! (well, some people I know would say that)).

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Guest
Feb 22, 2012 Feb 22, 2012

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Thanks man!

Untitled-2.png

You sure we don't need to grid this though? I tried Text Frame Options => Vertical Justification => Align: Centre - but it leaves a lot to be desired, and I feel the line-height between "adobe.com/" and "indesign" could use more order and harmony with its surrounding spaces. I'm also thinking of adding a disclaimer to the footer.

These posters are to be hung up at a place where the design standards are very high, so I don't want nobody laughing behind my back going "looks like somebody forgot his grids this morning". I'm also a big fan of Wim Crouwel, and I'm pretty sure he'd use a grid for something like this.

--Dwayne

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Community Expert ,
Feb 22, 2012 Feb 22, 2012

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If you do draw a grid (or at least 2 horizontal lines, dviding the area into three equal strips), you will see you must not rely on "Vertical align to Center" for such a job! First off, it has four different settings for the top offset (Leading, capitals, x-height, Ascender) -- which one is used? Second, it depends on whether you want "use" the tops of characters -- in your example only the "d" and "b" stick out -- or the top of the lowercase characters. Align them by eye and step way back from your screen to get a visual impression.

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Guest
Feb 23, 2012 Feb 23, 2012

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Hello!

Nah, I think I will not use the top of the characters - this way the grid will be more precise too right?

I'm looking at http://whatype.com/texts/the-complex-grid/ but all the math is making my head spin. Do you have any suggestions of perhaps an easier way to do this?

--Dwayne

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Valorous Hero ,
Feb 23, 2012 Feb 23, 2012

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I don't know what all is on this poster you are making. If it were me doing it, I would make a few variations of what pleases my eye.

Take care, Mike

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Guest
Mar 08, 2012 Mar 08, 2012

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Like I wrote over in the Print Design forum:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4243314

Basically at The Complex Grid I got as far as finding the number of lines I needed. 4 lines would be perfect - lines 2 and 3 could contain my text, and lines 1 and 4 could form the surrounding space. But {4-(2-1)}/2 didn't add up - only {5-(2-1)}/2 did - and I have no idea how to make it work with 5 lines. Anybody know what to do?

Thanks!

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 13, 2012 Mar 13, 2012

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In my younger days I worked in the print trade at the time that the International Paper Sizes (the A sizes) were introduced in Britain, replacing the old British Standard paper sizes.

The A paper sizes are root 2 rectangles (if the short side is 1, the long side is equal to the square root of 2 [roughly 1.4] or put another way, the long side is the diagonal of a square of the short side). It's not precisely Golden Ratio but it's close. One technique commonly used at the time they were introduced was to exploit this relationship between the square and the A sizes by using the square of the short side (either from the top or the bottom) to divide the space. A variation on the theme is to use a circle (a circular picture/illustration/pattern for example) instead of a square.

In the illustration, 1 shows the basic divisions, upper and lower. In 2 the root 2 rectangle is divided using the upper square; the remaining area at the bottom comprises of a square (a) and another root 2 rectangle (b). Area b can also be divided in a similar manner. These divisions were used to determine placement of and/or sizing/cropping of the elements of the design. The circle within the square is indicated by c.

That said good design is hand, heart, eye and brain. The danger here is that you end up with all brain and no heart.

root2.png

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