Through the application of letterforms as text, words, sentences and paragraphs, they inherently create their own objects (blocks of text, as well as absence of text creation of space). Setting text into grids and spreads widens the scope of what type is and where it exists (and it introduces more issues with legibility and form) and it is an extension of the use of typography that zooms out into a new level of type application. For this project we were to re-format an article using Adobe InDesign and in doing so, create a new layout of grid and spreads.

I chose to re-format an article out of ChemMatters, an educational magazine associated with the American Chemical Society that my high school classmates and I would be given on days when our teacher was absent. These articles usually had sections that were difficult to distinguish, graphics that would break up text, and other distracting factors. Many of us ended up skimming through the already-short articles to find the answers to the questions rather than actually reading and taking away anything from the article.

I wanted to make the information communicated in the article more meaningful and straightforward by dividing the sections with bars and increasing the scale of the typeface. I also wanted to include sections for the students to take notes, and have a more cohesive framework for the information overall.

Some other challenges were to avoid the creation of widows, orphans (left-behind text) as well as lakes and rivers (shapes created by the negative space of text spacing). If I were to go back and edit my document, I would pay more attention to the measurements of the layout and spacing. Even if they are off by a little bit, it is still noticeable, and it would be helpful to establish a consistent rule.