#31 Searching for the Perfect Page

Jan Tschihold

Jan Tschichold (1902–1974) is a person of interest in the world of graphic design. He worked hard perfecting --or searching for perfection-- in various project. One of my favorites was his creation of the Sabon type family in 1964.

Sabon font family includes 6 weights plus italics and Small Caps and Old style.

Tschichold was a typographer, book designer, teacher and writer.

One of the things I found fascinating about him was his research of ancient books to find how to divide a page in pleasing proportions, He studied the page layout of ancient monks and Gutenberg's 9x9 layout and eventually demonstrated the geometry and published about his findings.

Gutenberg's 9x9 layout

 tschichold-perfect-book

I then did an experiment to see what the "grid" would be for 8.5 x 11 inch pages. The dimensions are shown below.

My Americanized version.

Stretchy fluid web page with "perfect" percentages.

You can play with a crude mockup online here >

So, you may ask, "What good is this esoteric information for what I'm designing?"

If you are attempting to create a historical theme with a "feeling" of being "old, ancient, or spiritual," this is a good format. It's great for storybooks and fairy tales. It may be appropriate for a thematic brochure. The idea is the page layout alone creates a subconscious "reminder" of days gone by. In reality, it's not "perfect" for every application. But trying it out on your page dimensions can give you new perspective.