OUGD404 - Design Principles - Grids and layouts 1

I found the session we had on grids pretty interesting, we learnt all about the Fibonacci sequence  which is the basis for a lot of photography and print. The Fibonacci sequence comes from a guy called Leonardo that takes this idea from what we see in nature, the sequence is as follows,
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, ect...

We started the sessions by making our own examples of the sequence on graph paper, starting with a 1cm square and following the number sequence. At first it wasn't the easiest thing to get your head around but once you knew what you were doing it became obvious.

The week before we were told to bring 5 different kinds of magazines into the session to cut up, at first we cut the pages into 9 different sections using the rule of thirds, you found once cut up the hierachy of the pages became very obvious. You could see the places where your eye is attracted to first which is usually in the center or top center of the page, everything moves from the center of the page. 

I found it interesting when we were shown examples of photography that involves the Fibonacci sequence, it was amazing how it almost perfectly replicated the curve like the one at the top of this post. The idea is that the point of interest is on the smallest part of the curve and everything moves out from this. A rose is a perfect example of the Fibonacci sequence in nature.

To gain a better grasp and an understanding of the Fibonacci sequence we drew the sequence out in boxes, when you do this if you do it right you can see the curve starting from the smallest box round to the edge to the largest.

Spacing is a very important part of design it could be the difference between a good piece of design and an excellent one. Every aspect of a design needs to be taken into consideration from the size of the heading to the  widths of the various sections.

The rule of thirds is another important tool used in layout design, although predominantly used in photography this still very much applies to graphic design. The rule of thirds governs points of interests in a picture or layout. The rule of third is to set the focal point in an image, something the eye is immediately attracted to.

The blue dots show the focal points in the picture

We were told to cut up some pages of a magazine into their individual sections, by deconstructing the pages you could on some example see the Fibonacci sequence and the rule of thirds being applied.

By deconstructing already existing layouts you could really get a good idea of how pages were put together, after deconstructing my own layouts I started to look at other artist who predominantly work with layout design, the first and most obvious who came to mind was David Carson. He has been doing work for years on various different magazines with a very noticeable and individual style. He really takes the idea of the grid layout system and throws it out the window, although this much is true you can also see a very thought out process when designing his layouts. They are very interesting in the way they are unstructured but at the same time still follow some rules. Here are just a few examples I have picked out. 

I felt by looking at layouts and deconstructing them I have learnt something valuable that I will be able to apply to my own work, for example the next time I design a poster or some art work I will bare in mind the Fibonacci sequence and the rule of thirds, at the same time though I would like to take inspiration from David Carson's work in terms of his appearingly unstructured layouts.