In terms of creating design, there is always an importance in setting up a grid system for yourself. This elicits uniformity and alignment. A grid system is most useful for page layouts. Things can now be displayed in a logical way and can be unknowingly easy on the eyes. Design that is set up with a grid system is more easily viewable. But why do we always have to utilize this "system." It's not like there are specific rules involved with setting up the grid. So why must we labor over it? What would design be like if we were to just... discard it?

When I open up a magazine, upon first sight I do not notice the underlying grid system that the designer has set up for the reader. The average person would NEVER notice. But upon closer inspection I can find it. I can tell how the designer set up the document: there are a certain amount of columns and the text is usually aligned at the same position throughout the page, i.e. visual uniformity. But do I only notice this because I am a designer? Do I notice because I have been "trained" to notice?

Now: back to the average reader. Do they really appreciate it? If there were no grid system, would that person really care? OR would they even notice? I'm going to say the latter. People are so used to opening up a magazine and quickly flipping through the pages, thus all of that highly considered graphic material is somewhat lost to them. The average Joe doesn't really consider: text color, typographic choices, subhead content, or body text alignment... to them it's just the "stuff" that makes up the magazine. Because of this, I feel like the grid system isn't really that important to readers.

But I cannot imagine what layouts would be like if it weren't for the grid. If I didn't set up some of my work with a grid system, I'd be trying to "wing it" anyway. I would want things to line up without even knowing why. But the fact is that I do try to set up a grid: it serves a real purpose although the average person doesn't really notice it anyway. But if a layout were set up without a grid system, it would probably look really odd to the reader. Imagine if text were running off the page, or if body text were set up to be wall-to-wall with its outligning text box. This would certainly create visual chaos and therefore would be much more hard to read.

The fact is that we need the grid system in design. It seems as if there are no rules when setting up a grid system, however there is a purpose: to present information in a clear and logical way. Without this, the nature of magazines and layout would change.