Design with grids - Illustrator Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this movie we're going to address two design industry sacred cows. What the term sacred cow means is an individual organization institution tradition or idea considered to be exempt from criticism or questioning. So let me show you what the context is and I think it may demystify some design lore you've probably run into at one point or another. So this is our test design that we created here. Now there's many people in the design industry that tend to look at a graphic mark like this T for Tusk and then you see this done a lot. Where they slap a design grid on it as if this was the way the design was created and I'll just say right now I did not create this design by doing this, I mean some of this in my opinion is a little bit absurd on some of the ones I've seen. But if I zoom on this you can see they'll slap a little circle down there because it comes to a circle. Well that's not how you create this, you'd never want to create it that way. So I don't believe half of the design grids I see out there regarding logos, I just don't. Frankly I think it may look nice to explain shape and form but it really isn't the way I built this mark at all. I created this after the fact and ironically I think most of the ones that you see out there, that's exactly how they've done it as well, it's created after the fact. But that's my opinion, I'll let you come to your own conclusion, and in this case with this design, it started with the typeface that I used in the design itself for Tusk it started with the letter T and I just went from this and created the styling I wanted. I wanted it a little more beefy since it's a construction company and this is where it derived from. I didn't use circles and crazy grids, design grids to pull it off, I try to keep the process as simple as possible and I just wanted to cover that because you're going to see a lot of those logos out there where they slap the grid on it and to try to wow people. I just think most of that is a design myth and there's many design myths in my opinion in this industry and one of the biggest ones is what's called the golden ratio. And you've probably heard this or seen this or you've read something that referenced the golden ratio. Now is the golden ratio true? Maybe it's debatable, I think there's definitely things in nature that kind of represent this approach, this is a nautilus shell and this kind of aligns with the golden ratio diagram. You see here I've seen this also applied to a fern as it curls and all the various leaves of a fern and how that kind of aligns to a golden ratio. But the common denominator between those two things is man didn't create those, nature did. So is the golden ratio true? Well all I'm going to say is in almost 30 years of creating identity design, I've not once used the golden ratio to work out a design, I haven't found any secret cereal box answer to the universe by using it and I certainly don't use it to design a logo like this. I just think it's a design myth. Some of you may disagree with me on that, that's fine, but I encourage you to go to Google and google the golden ratio designs biggest myth, there's a great article out there put out by Fast Company Design and read it. They make some really excellent arguments. I didn't even know that existed until recently, but I've always found it a little suspicious that this was being pushed so much in different circles, but those are two myths, one is the logo grid, one is the golden ratio. I basically use neither to create all my artwork. So let's focus here on what kind of grid can you use? Well I'm going to walk you through here is exactly how I approach all of these various projects using grids. So if it's a letterhead, I'll create a grid system that looks like this, basically I'm determining my margins and orientation for the center of the document in this case. So vertical and horizontal and then I'll use that to guide my layout. So if I'm using a modular design that's centered, then that will align to the perimeter of my grid for the margin and the contact information on the letterhead will drop down below. This applies to any kind of format I'm creating. Maybe I'm creating an envelope so in this case the envelope would be like this, my grid would look like this, and then I would align all my elements to that grid to pull off the design on a custom envelope in this case. So that's how I'd use it on an envelope. Maybe I'm working on a business card and so this shows a business card, whether it's vertical or horizontal, let's go ahead and zoom in here. This simple grid is going to guide my layout whether I'm creating a vertical or horizontal layout of the business card, whether it's the front or the back of a business card. I use the same grid to pull off any kind of layout like this. It doesn't have to be complicated, it certainly doesn't have to be the golden ratio, I just don't find any usefulness in any of those. Let's take a look at one more, a notepad design here. So we'll turn on that, we'll turn on the grid for the notepad and the design here if I turn this on, we'll go ahead and zoom in a little so you can see this a little better. A notepad, just think of a pad of paper and it just happens to have your branding on it and your tabling down below. I use these all the time, but this is how I'd lay this out. You could do it where it's centered on top, it just depends on your own propagative design-wise. This is actually exactly what my own personal notepads look like, I have my brand mark at the top left and I have some information down below, namely my URL and (mumbles) original illustrative design. All of my sketches, thumbnails that is, are done on these pads and then I tear it off and I usually place it in the project folder as I'm working. So this is how you can use simple grids to lay out things. Now the one thing I want to talk about in terms of grids is that think of using grids as a way to ensure continuity and order within your layout and design. This principle of design transcends mere graphic design, you find it's all the time in industrial design. So maybe your grid looks like this and it guides the fabrication of a Bento Box. It could be that simple, the use of grids bring determined elegance to design contents like the Bento Box and they ensure everything is in its proper place, much like the sushi within this Bento Box. So I tried to figure out an analogy and I was eating sushi and I said hey this is perfect, this works for it. So like the zen of sushi, you can achieve the same balance of continuity and order by using simple grids to guide you. Now the last thing I want to leave you with regarding the use of simple grids and you're going to see this pop up on all the various things we're going to create now is using simple design grids will improve your design and help you avoid the visual tension caused by discontinuity which leads to an aesthetic well reminiscent of a bad TV dinner. So you want to avoid that, you don't want your design to look bad because then it won't be appetizing and no one wants to visually consume that.