Breaking the Grid to Visually Enhance Literature

Abstract

The grid is a tool that designers use in layout design to create balanced visually appealing designs. This project challenged students to explore breaking away from the grid to visually enhance an assigned short story. Through literary analysis, sketch, and peer critique this project seeks to develop a system to break out of the grid in a deliberate and logical way. Following the themes of ejection, and the vivid imagery surrounding the layout of the house, this story uses a blueprint as its grid. The story sits comfortably in the house in two equal columns until it is suddenly interrupted. “I heard it at the end of the passage” pulls the reader away from the grid as it sits outside of the col- umn that had been set before. These larger texts continue to interrupt the grid and Take Over our reading experience on the next page. Everything that happens after the house begins to take over happens on the right side of the page and, due to the higher volume of text, feels more cramped, just as Irene and her brother do. The house continues to interrupt the text and breaks up both columns. The columns are different widths on this page, the wider column represents the long slow days as the pair of siblings struggle to find things to do with their days, while the thinner column represents the speed at which the house finally succeeds at ejecting them from their own home.

Department: Design

Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pacher