Using InDesign Grids in Your Projects

When laying out books or magazines, the software tool you’ll be designing with is InDesign. InDesign was created mainly for editorial designs where there is a lot of text and a lot of images. If you know how to use InDesign in the way it was intended, it can help you layout some amazing editorial projects. Though there is no one single format that you’ll use for all of your editorial projects, the one thing that should be consistent when designing is the use of grids in the background. InDesign grids in your background not only help you organize text and images so that your publication has a sense of order and hierarchy, but they also help the user have a more pleasant reading experience once your publication is finalized.

There are two types of grids that you’ll use in the background when you’re laying out your pages. You’ll have a baseline grid, which is where you’ll align lines of text, and you’ll have a document grid, which you’ll use for aligning objects such as large text (think pull quotes), maybe small text (such as an image description) or in a standalone items such as in images.

WHY GRIDS?

Let’s start out by talking about why grids come in handy in InDesign. Magazines, for example, have a lot going on. There are different articles and a lot of other information that is happening to draw the reader in. Take a home and lifestyle magazine, for example; you might have articles that talk about renovating your kitchen followed by a how-to article for setting up a vegetable garden. You might find a section for favorite recipes or how to throw the perfect cocktail party. And of course, you will find pages interspersed throughout that will tell you what articles to buy and where to buy them for your home. No two pages are alike, but what they do have in common is the use of grids in the background to properly lay out all these items.

Examples of baseline grid (left) and document grid (right).

HOW INDESIGN GRIDS WORK

Grids have a lot of components that when placed together correctly, they make your publication work. Again, all InDesign grids will have the basic elements such as a baseline grid (think of lined paper in the background) and margins. They can also have a document grid for the correct placement of images or pull quotes. The document grid works with the baseline grid having horizontal lines and vertical lines (columns) for spacing between images or text with images, etc. One of the most important things to consider when designing for an editorial publication is to remember to leave room to breathe. You need to allow just the right amount of white space between elements so that the user isn’t feeling overwhelmed when reading it and the document grid will help you align these items beautifully.

TYPES OF COLUMNS AND HOW THEY FUNCTION

Single column layouts, such as in novels or essays, are good for continuous reading. The intent of a single column layout is for slow reading. It tells your eye, “Hey! This is a good story and I want you to sit back and enjoy what I’m about to tell.”

Two or more columns are intended for faster reading. It tells your eye, “This is important information that I’m sharing with you and I want you to grasp it quickly.” They are also used to control text heavy articles. Say you have a scientific article that’s heavy of facts and data. If it were all set to one column (as in, across the entire page), even the most avid science lover would probably feel overwhelmed in reading that kind of information like you would a novel. You need something to break up the monotony of text heavy items. Columns help you to digest the information in bits and pieces by allowing your eye to move up and down and not all the way across a row of text. Ever think, “When will this sentence end?” In this case, columns are your friends. ­­

An example of the variety of ways you can layout out a two-column page. The variety of layout possibilities increase with more columns.

HOW TO MAKE A GRID IN INDESIGN

Before any decisions can be made on your grid, you have to know what size your publication will be. Is this a book? A magazine? Whatever your publication is, you have to know the size beforehand so that you can take this first step in setting up your grids in InDesign.

1) KNOW YOUR FONT AND FONT SIZE

Before you can successfully lay out a baseline grid in InDesign, you need to know what font you’ll be using. Depending on what font you select for your body copy, you will then need to select a size for that font that is appropriate for the user. If you’re doing a print publication, you may want to do a few test prints to get a feel for the size you’re selecting and to also see at what size the user will be reading. Font size looks a lot different on your screen than it does in print, so I’ll usually print my text (done in Word) at different font sizes to see which size is legible. Why is this important? Because no two fonts at the same point size look the same. They might be very similar, but for example, Baskerville at 10 pts is a little bit smaller than Century Schoolbook at 10 pts and it might be harder to read. Do that test print!

2) SET UP YOUR BASELINE GRID (WITH CORRECT LEADING)

After you’ve set up your margins, you’ll want your baseline grid to line up nicely within them and you’ll want to do this in Parent Pages. Why? So that it will carry over to each page that you apply a Parent Page to it.

To set up your baseline grid, go to the InDesign command in your top right hand corner and click on it. Go to Preferences > Grids. Once that menu has opened, do the following to the Baseline Grid section as shown in the image below. Don’t worry about modifying anything else.

I’ve selected 14 pts for my “Increment Every” option because I’ve selected Libre Baskerville as my font and the size that works well in print is 10.5 pts. The leading that works best for this is 14 pt. Yours might be different, depending on your font size. If your font size is 12, then your leading might be 16 pts. Again, do a test print to see what size your font needs to be so that your reader can read it legibly and adjust your “Increment Every” accordingly. Make sure your “Start” is at “0” and your “Relative To” is at “Top of Margin” as shown below. Leave everything else in your “Document Grid” section as shown below.

To get this menu, in InDesign, click on “InDesign” at the top left-hand corner of your screen, scroll down to “Preferences” and then select “Grids”.

Here is Baskerville text set at 10.5 pts on a 12 pt grid. Because the size of the text is too big for that size of grid, InDesign will tell it to skip a line between each one to give it more breathing room. This is not the look I’m going for so I will need to adjust the leading (or “Increment Every”) accordingly.

Here is the same size text on a 14 pt grid. See the difference? InDesign now knows that there’s more breathing room in the leading and will, therefore, move the text along to the next line, not skipping.

3) IDENTIFY YOUR NUMBER OF COLUMNS

Unless you’re working with a novel that is mainly text and not much else, you’ll want to work with columns to help give your publication structure. You don’t want to place images or pull quotes or other text just nilly willy onto your page. Your publication will need structure and it will need to provide a positive reading experience for the user.

To set up your columns, you’re going to go back to Layout > Margins and Columns. Your gutter (the space between two columns) should be the same size as the leading of your background grid. If you’ll recall from prior examples, my leading was set to 14 pts so I’ll want my gutter size to be the same.

Type in 14 pt where it says “Gutter”. Don’t worry. InDesign will convert it to the right size. If you’re working in inches, it will convert it to inches. If you’re working in millimeters, it will convert it to millimeters and so on. As for the column numbers, it’s really up to you how many you want, but I suggest at least seven and up to ten columns on each page. This will give you a lot more flexibility when placing images or pull quotes.

YOUR DOCUMENT GRID

Now that you’ve got the basics down, something more advanced when considering combining text and images in a heavy editorial project is setting up a document grid to give you a more precise and cleaner look.  A document grid, if you’ll remember, has both horizontal and vertical lines strategically placed so that you can fill in a “grid” space with text, images, pull quotes, etc. Using this technique really gives your publications that polished look.

HOW TO SET UP YOUR DOCUMENT GRID

To set up your document grid in the background, do the following steps:

1.  On your Parent Page, go to the top left-hand corner and select Layout > Create Guides. A fly out menu will open and you will need to input some options.

2.   You’ll need to decide how many rows you want there to be in your publication. I normally go with six but you can go up to eight.

3.   Next, you’ll want to decide how many columns you want. If your page is pretty large, I would go with 10 columns. That will give you lots of options for placing items.

4.   The gutter option on both your rows and columns should match the size of the leading in your background grid. If you’ll remember, my leading was set to 14 pts so I’ll want my gutters to be at 14 pt.

5.   Under “Options”, you’ll want to select the  “Fit Guides To” margins options.

 Once you select “Ok”, you’ll be able to see your document grid overlaid on top of your background grid.

The blue guide lines of your document grid should, theoretically, line up with the lines of your background grid, but if they don’t (it happens), you can follow this tutorial to fix that issue. Once you’ve got it set up correctly, you are good to go!

WORKING WITH DIFFERENT GRID SYSTEMS

As I mentioned earlier, magazines have a lot of information happening in them. So, let’s explore how a magazine makes use of a grid system to lay out its information. Rest assured that a 12-column grid is being utilized in the background because it allows for so much flexibility in each page.

An example of the variety of ways you can layout out a magazine page built on a 12 column system.

The same grid system can be used for more complex book publications such as educational textbooks (science and history, anyone?) and cookbooks. Cookbooks are my favorite to peruse because not only do I get to look at some amazing images of food that I will never make (a fan of cooking I am not), but I also get to digest (no pun intended) different parts of a recipe. A recipe might have a short introduction about its ingredients or history, and it will usually be followed by a list of ingredients and instructions on how to prepare. My eye is allowed to travel along the page and can easily find what it’s looking for. How much salt does it say to add? My eye travels to the ingredients section without even thinking about it. It’s automatic.

An example of the variety of ways you can layout out a cookbook also built on a 12 column system. You can easily tell which part is the title, the introduction, the list of ingredients and the instructions.

I hope this very brief explanation of why working with grids in your layout is crucial to having a functional and appealing publication. If you’re looking for more in-depth info to guide you, check out Flipping Pages or Layout Essentials. These are two of my must-haves in my personal library. And of course, Pinterest is always a great source for image type inspiration.