Grids and Type

20.04.10 - Maths with smiles
I am pretty set on chosing to specialise in type next year and so I was really interested about the classes with Lorenzo. In the first session I measured type and learnt about ems.

• Pica em - the size of a letter m at 12 pt in any typeface
• em - the size of a letter m at any size in any typeface
• ligatures join awkward letters such as ff

To measure the size of any letter, go from the top of the ascender to the bottom of the descender. Then to measure the leading go from the bottom of the descender to the bottom of the next lines descender.

Front cover of chosen magazine and colour coded hand drawn grid.

3 column layout uses green columns.

4 column layout uses blue columns.

5 column layout uses yellow columns.