Where page conventions come from and what a genre allows
Page conventions reflect both the history of printing and the purpose of a document. Classical and modern styles carry different associations, while genres differ in how tightly rules constrain their layout.
Renaissance pages and their canons
Renaissance printers sought harmony between the page and its text block, developing principles still used in page design. Gutenberg's fifteenth-century movable-type printing contributed to the Renaissance and, ultimately, the Scientific Revolution, while books were luxury objects designed as harmonious units.
The golden rectangle uses the golden ratio, also called divine proportion, approximately 1:1.618. Removing the largest square that fits leaves another golden rectangle, so the construction can be repeated.
Modern interpretations of Renaissance page canons include:
- Van de Graaf's reconstruction from analyses of books such as Gutenberg's 1455 Bible.
- Raúl Rosarivo's 1947 Divina proporción tipográfica, which found pages divided into ninths horizontally and vertically, with diagonals defining the text block's width and height.
- Jan Tschichold's 1953 golden canon, which reflected earlier findings and added the rule that the text block's height equals the page's width.
Industrialisation and modern design
Industrial mechanisation brought economic growth alongside a decline in the importance of arts and crafts, including book printing; Britain's Arts and Crafts movement, led by William Morris, reacted to these changes.
The Bauhaus formed in Germany after the First World War, partly influenced by Morris and sharing functionalist and machine-aesthetic principles with Constructivism and De Stijl. Its design approach reduced form and colour to essentials, explored geometric alignment and asymmetric composition, favoured sans-serif type and ample white space, and rejected ornament. Gestalt theory provided a conceptual framework for explaining these aesthetics.
Jan Tschichold moved from classical design towards asymmetry after encountering El Lissitzky's paintings in the 1920s, and his Die neue Typographie became a manifesto of modern design. He returned to classical print design in the early 1930s, analysed early printed books for their page canons, and redesigned Penguin paperbacks while living in England between 1947 and 1949. After the Second World War, modernist graphic design became a cohesive movement known as the International Typographic Style.
Classical and modern styles
Classical page design derives from Italian Renaissance books and has been the dominant style in books. Modern design reflects De Stijl, Constructivism and Bauhaus influences, refined by Swiss designers.
The choice conveys how an organisation wishes to be seen: modern style suggests the cutting edge, while classical style implies tried and trusted values.
Layout, typography and content signals
Layout arranges text and visuals on a page, while typography arranges letters to make language visible, operating within paragraphs. The boundary between them is not always exact.
Column structure can signal different kinds of content. In a late-1990s Lancet redesign, two columns reflected the conventions of research-journal design, while three narrower columns distinguished the news sections and their journalistic content.
“Lorem ipsum” can hold the place of text while copy for brochures, websites and marketing materials is being written.
Genre constraints and layout errors
In regulatory documentation, patient information and scientific articles, content takes precedence over visual effects. Marketing documents and websites allow more striking ways to mark paragraphs, including dropped capitals, negative indentation, capitalised first words, pulled paragraphs, colour and animation; these are unsuitable for sober formal regulatory documents or scientific publications.
Typographic genres vary in how tightly rules constrain them:
| Genre | Source of constraint |
|---|---|
| Legislative acts and medicine labels | Highly rule-bound; layout may be legally enforceable. |
| Biomedical publications | Institutionally enforced international or journal-specific guidelines. |
| Newspapers | Convention. |
| Advertisements | Few layout rules; shared purpose and imitation form the genre. |
The more rule-bound a genre, the more specific a layout error can be: a medicine label may fail simply by not meeting legal provisions. In less constrained genres, failure is judged by the goal, as when a medicine advertisement never leads a physician to read the product name.