grid | 153Alphabetic writing, like most writing systems, is organized into columns
and rows of characters. Whereas handwriting flows into connected lines,
the mechanics of metal type impose a stricter order. Each letter occupies its
own block, and the letters congregate in orderly rectangles. Stored in gridded
cases, the characters become an archive of elements, a matrix of existing
forms from which each page is composed.
Until the twentieth century, grids served as frames for fields of text. The
margins of a classical book page create a pristine barrier around a flush,
solid block of text. A page dominated by a solitary field of type remains
today’s most common book format, although that perfect rectangle is now
broken with indents and line breaks, and the margins are peppered with
page numbers and running heads (text indicating the book or chapter title).
In addition to the classical norm of the single-column page, various
alternative layouts existed during the first centuries of printing, from the
two-column grid of Gutenberg’s Bible to more elaborate layouts derived
from the medieval scribal tradition, where passages of scripture are
surrounded by scholarly commentary. Polyglot (multilingual) books display
a text in several languages simultaneously, demanding complex divisions
of the surface.
Such formats permit multiple streams of text to coexist while defending
the sovereignty of the page-as-frame. The philosopher Jacques Derrida has
described the frame in Western art as a form that seems to be separate from
the work, yet is necessary for marking its difference from everyday life. A
frame or pedestal elevates the work, removing it from the realm of the
ordinary. The work thus depends on the frame for its status and visibility.
Typography is, by and large, an art of framing, a form designed to melt
away as it yields itself to content. Designers focus much of their energy on
margins, edges, and empty spaces, elements that oscillate between present
and absent, visible and invisible. With print’s ascent, margins became the
user interface of the book, providing space for page numbers, running
heads, commentary, notes, and ornaments.grid as frame
The frame... disappears, buries itself, effaces itself, melts away at the moment it deploys its
greatest energy. The frame is in no way a background ... but neither is its thickness as margin
a figure. Or at least it is a figure that comes away of its own accord. —jacques derrida, 1987