After posting the blog entry for aesthetic grid we ended up chatting about it in the Inkscape chat. I thought this was an interesting part of the conversation:

* mental usually sets up a document grid, then draws a coarser rectangular grid with marked wells/gutters
Ted: mental, are you talking about something like laying out the frames in your comic?
mental: Ted: yes
mental: Ted: though, I use it for other design elements besides panel borders as well
mental: of course what wins in the end is what looks good, but it gives me a scaffolding to work on

I like the idea of a grid is scaffolding to work on. But, I think the real moral of the story here is that a grid is something very personal. We can create many grids that hit the majority of audiences, but people are also going to want something that deals with exactly what they are doing.

I think the right approach here might to have a feature where a group of objects can be turned into the grid. This would be similar to how a group of objects can be made a marker or a pattern. This way, mental can make a grid that matches his comic book, send it to grid, and then get snapping and everything else that a grid helps with.

Hmm, difficult to implement though...


posted Aug 4, 2004 | permanent link