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Layout & composition · Grid systems

Column grid

Vertical columns structure text and image; vertical placement is free.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under layout & composition: how is the picture plane organised?

styles make it: 51
as a defining choice: 9
as a usual one: 20
now and then: 22
avoid it: 2

Styles defined by it 9

For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.

Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic & Register Compositionc. 0–394 · Middle East & North AfricaThe visual system of pharaonic Egypt, in which writing is made of pictures and pictures are ruled like writing.
Ethiopian Ge'ez Manuscript & Haräg Illuminationc. 500–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe manuscript art of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, written in the Ge'ez syllabary on parchment from the Garima Gospels (radiocarbon-dated to roughly the 4th–7th centuries) to the present.
Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)c. 960–present · East AsiaThe page and letter of the East Asian book.
Urdu Katib Lithography1837–present · South AsiaFor about a century and a half Urdu chose lithography over movable type, because metal type could not reproduce the sloping, stacked ligatures of Nastaʿlīq.
Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type1947–present · Middle East & North AfricaArabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen.
Japanese Dense Web Design1999–present · East AsiaThe information-packed look of Japan's big portals, shops, airlines and ministries: three or more narrow columns of boxed modules, crowded with small Japanese text, blue links, tiny thumbnails, dated news lists and rotating ad banners, in bright colours on a white page.
Korean Webtoon Graphics2002–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe full-colour, vertical-scroll comic that Korean web portals made standard in the 2000s and smartphone apps took worldwide.
Newsroom Data Graphics & Scrollytelling2009–present · North America, Western EuropeThe house style of newspaper graphics desks since about 2009–2011 (the New York Times graphics desk, D3.js, the Guardian Datablog): conventional charts drawn from the data, on a white or pale paper ground with light grey gridlines and no axis titles, lines labelled directly in place of a legend where possible and short annotations saying what to look at.
GOV.UK Design (GDS Style)2012–present · Western EuropeThe text-led design of GOV.UK, the UK government's single website, built by the Government Digital Service from 2012 and codified in the GOV.UK Design System (2018).

Styles that often use it 20

A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.

Styles that use it now and then 22

An occasional choice in these styles.

It often goes with

Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.

Layered informationin 37 of 51
Rectilinearin 32 of 51
Rational & objectivein 25 of 51
Light groundin 48 of 51
Typography onlyin 31 of 51
Rules & barsin 27 of 51

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in layout & composition