Initial A2 literature design

I have been thinking about my a2 grid, and after looking at the design for the a3 grid, the modules are getting rather small. For the a2 grid, I am going to enlarge the grid. So that the baseline still works with the grid etc, I will have an enlargement of the current a4 and a3 grid by x2. This will also mean that my logo will have to have a varied size too, this of course is not a problem, it just means that I have to change my initial outline for my style sheets slightly.

So for the a2 grid calculations-

A2 size- 594 x 420

New column width and gutter width and row widths-

Gutter- 8mm. Column width- 28mm

To work out the width of columns, I am going to divide the width and depth of paper by the gutter and column width and then round the number down to a whole number with a decent gutter size.

For the column width-

8 + 28 = 36



420/36 = 11.67

So I am going to presume that 10 columns will create a nice inside and outside margin. To calculate the margin:

10 x 28 = 280
9 x 8 =  72

280 + 72 = 352

420 - 352 = 68

68/2 = 34

This gives quite a large left and right margin, however, structurally, it will relate to my a4 grid system, So I am going to keep it like this.

For the top and bottom margin, I am going to presume that the perfect number of rows is 14, because again this relates to my a4 grid system. So, to calculate the top and bottom margin-

14 x 28 = 392
13 x 8 = 104

392 + 104 = 496

594 - 496 = 98

98/2 = 49

So the top and bottom margin will be 49mm

Now I am going to construct this grid in indesign, and see if it works.

This does work and I have margins that are consistant in size to my A4 literature format, so now I am going to start experimenting with layout for A2 literature. Text is going to be smaller and on some I may choose to include more information. For content, I am going to advertise masterclasses by my favourite typographers and also I am going to advertise Typography Workshop dates (these are obviously made up and just an example of the type of information that the visual system that I am designing could display). 

Example of positioning of an image on A2 literature. This is an image of Jonathan Barnbrook. Obviously   because the image size is much larger, a really high quality image must be sourced. 

These posters are just not working. Firstly, for some reason I am using a different colour palette that consists of lighter colours to my final colour palette?  Anyway, regardless of that fact, the layouts are not strong. I am using 30 and 60 point type, and the type is getting lost in the composition. Also, there isnt enough variance in design from a4 literature to a2 literature. I may as well just enlarge the A4 literature to A2 size. I need to rethink my approach to this. I said at the start of this post that I wanted to enlarge the modules and gutter by a scale factor of 2 but I think that this was the wrong decision. I think that I need to keep the module size and the gutter consistent across the design of all of the typography workshop literature formats. This will create more variance in design and appearance with the differing sizes of literature. Therefore, I am going to rework my a2 document grid so that it accommodates for this change. Then I will experiment with the new, more complex a2 grid and come up with a new design solution for layout.