Going Off the Grid

In my last post I referenced Inception and The Matrix when discussing the Meanings of Epistemic Rhetoric and yet again I couldnt help but think of another movie when talking about the grid. In the movie TRON the grid was vital to the games the "Programs" would play being:

"a grid square plane that is several miles wide. Surrounding the Grid are giant walls with numeric and mathematical symbols displayed on them.

The walls are ordinarily impenetrable, but Flynn's user knowledge has proven able to exploit a vulnerability in the code and consequently allow him to breach the wall." -http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Game_Grid

In high school, my digital media teacher had us design a website in Adobe InDesign, stressing the importance of using "White Space": portions of the page not taken up by text or other objects. While having a grid creates structure, I believe it is sometimes necessary to "breach the wall" of a standard default grid design. I hardly ever use default grids. Whether they be the ones website builders provide, or even the grid alignment on my desktop: I always change them to fit my needs.

Websites are just that, SIGHTS. Online, text and visuals are given more creative freedom in how they can be displayed and should appear differently than as compared to in a book where they have to adhere to a grid system. The trick is to not completely disregard the grid in favor of creative freedom.