# #004

Mies, my great mentor said: “God is in the details.” That is the essence of syntax: the discipline that controls the proper use of grammar in the construction of phrases and the articulation of a language, Design. The syntax of design is provided by many components in the nature of the project.

For us Graphic Design is “organization of information.” There are other types of graphic design more concerned with illustration or of a narrative nature. Nothing could be more useful to reach our intention than the Grid. The grid represents the basic structure of our graphic design, it helps to organize the content, it provides consistency, it gives an orderly look and it projects a level of intellectual elegance that we like to express. There are in nite kinds of grids, but just one - the most appropriate - for any problem. Therefore, it becomes important to know which kind of grid is the most appropriate. The basic understanding is that the smaller the module of the grid the least helpful it could be. We could say that an empty page is a page with an in nitesimal small grid. Therefore, it is equivalent to not being there. Conversely a page with a coarse grid is a very restricting grid offering too few alternatives. The secret is to nd the proper kind of grid for the job at hand. Sometimes, in designing a grid we want to have the outside margins small enough to provide a certain tension between the edges of the page and the content. After that we divide the page in a certain number of columns according to the content, three, two, four, ve, six, etc. Columns provide only one kind of consistency, but we also need to have an horizontal frame of reference to assure certain levels of continuity throughout the publication. Therefore, we will divide the page from top to bottom in a certain number of Modules, four, six, eight, or more, according to size and need. Once we have structured the page, we will begin to structure the information and place it in the grid in such a way that the clarity of the message will be enhanced by the placement of the text on the grid. There are in nite ways of doing this and that is why the grid is a useful tool, rather than a constricting device.