A wise woman once said, “If they put as much attention to detail into making a movie as they do into marketing a movie, we wouldn’t see so much crap coming out of Hollywood.”

It’s no surprise that movie posters become etched in our minds. Be it the jaw-dropping poster of Jaws (1975), a truly shiver-inducing one from Jurassic Park (1993) or the tear-jerker of Titanic (1997), moviegoers worldwide truly love and adore these posters to date. Movie posters and trailers evoke interest among the audience, and movie studios make sure that they create a stellar teaser campaign to pique their interest and leave them on edge, waiting apprehensively for the final showdown. They have to excite, inspire, and compel the potential viewers in ways that will have them rushing to the theaters, streaming them at their homes, or scramble towards the nearest store to get their hands on a DVD.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen some amazing posters unravel, which are based on grid designs. The grid-based approach has been used across several movie websites as well, and it has been making waves all over. Movie posters for Collateral Beauty and Nocturnal Animals, for example, has raised the bar for what we can anticipate in the future.

When it comes to websites as well, grids are considered one of the fundamental staples over the canvas to glean a mind-boggling and rich design. While there can be many reasons why a designer may opt for grids, improving the overall design and infusing the website with a contemporary feel are one of the pivotal reasons.

Let me offer you some insight into the vivacious history of how such complex posters were created in the first place, applying grid designs and using the process for incorporating imagination coupled with impeccable designing.

1. A Double Exposure Effect for Nocturnal Animals

The climatic double exposure effect is a popular theme for movies that center on thriller and crime drama genre. The double exposure effect can be capitalized on for introducing multiple characters or settings with vivid details. The silhouette of a man sauntering forward with a full-body shot set against the face of a woman brimming over with a host of emotions is an amazing way to reveal a thing or two about the plot while keeping the interest levels piqued.

2. An Image Grid for Collateral Beauty

Collateral Beauty’s spectacular grid-based image depicts the power of grids when applied the right way. The poster is minimalistic yet contemporary in its look and feel. It’s a collage incorporating virtually all of the cast members, with the image of the main protagonist, played by Will Smith, dominating the scene. Adobe InDesign can be used to create this image once you activate its gridify effect. While I am skipping the rest of the nitty-gritty details on how the image was conceived and edited in the first place, it is the power of the grids applied to the image that makes it truly captivating.

3. Dazzling Perspective on the Grid Function for the Magnificent Seven

To make the poster really pop out, the designers hopped on exaggerated perspective to portray the main characters of the movie in a 3D like effect. This was all possible by using the Adobe Illustrator’s Perspective Grid function.

4. Grids for Organized Content

A website can be viewed quickly and can leave a better impact on its visitors if its content is organized, intuitively laid out, and easy to peruse through. The design below is done up by Christine Wisnieski. You can easily check out this grid-based layout and see how each element is neatly aligned. The result is an organized layout that keeps the clutter at bay and allows the visitors to search for any information in a spruced up manner.

5. Diagonal Grid in Web Site Designs

Grids can assist you greatly if you are going for a diagonal design. This can be a really cool effect as you can play around with multiple angles and see which suits you the best. The poster below by Andrew Ackroyd demands instant attention due to the diagonal placement of the text at heart of the image.

Learn How to Choose Beautiful Background Images for your Website & Hypnotize your Customers?

5 Popular Grid Systems for Web Designers

I hope you are now eager to learn about some grid systems which can be leveraged by designers to come up with dazzling designs replete with stellar details. Here, we enlist the most popular grid systems which are easily available across the market. Their ease of use, innovative functions, and a host of exceptional features make them worthy of applaud. Apart from Adobe Illustrator and InDesign for graphics and pictures, the following grid systems can help you design striking websites that offer a unique experience to your visitors and capture their eye.

1. Bootstrap

One of the most popular grid systems available to us, Bootstrap is laced with a front-end component library. In essence, it is an open source toolkit that works equally well with HTML, CSS, and JS. The responsive grid system and its extensive prebuilt components are like a treasure trove for web designers and developers alike.

2. Simple Grid

Simple Grid is a 12 column, lightweight CSS grid which is open source in nature. It can assist developers in quickly building responsive websites. It is very simple to use as you just need to download the style sheet, add the appropriate classes to the markup, and get right down to developing a custom website according to your requirements.

3. Pure

Pure is an amalgamation of small, responsive CSS module, sand is among the most popular platforms loved by professional developers. The salient feature of Pure is its documentation aspect since it drills developers in how they can up their CSS and design game. The company proudly promotes it as a platform especially tailored for hand-held devices so that design elements can look great across all screen sizes.

4. 960 Grid System

960 grid is an old player in this list but new entrants in the field have been giving it a run for its money recently. To streamline the web development workflow, it is based on a 960 pixels width which is its mainstay. 12- Column and 16-column grids are provided to users, with a 24-column grid reserved only for premium users.

5. Foundation

Great for responsive projects, Foundation claims to be the most cutting-edge front-end frameworks, available commercially. Foundation makes it easy to design websites that look amazing across cross-platforms. Its additional capability of offering an email framework makes it unique, as users can create HTML emails that are readable across all devices.

Final Word

Grid system are not just a passing fad. They are in vogue dating back to the late Middle Ages. People used to create layouts based on proportional grids some 600 years ago and the grids are here to stay for a long long time. This blog is all about the use of grid systems and to explore how these systems along with other softwares and tools are making websites and graphics exceptional in every sense.

If you have any query in mind regarding this blog or want to offer your valuable feedback, please use the comments section below.