Grids
14 February 2008 Jeff Gill
In which I neatly jump from graphic designers’ grid systems to the internet’s most famous archdruid to the historian Arnold Toynbee to a church in North Carolina to the bible to you.
Image borrowed from Mark Boulton’s grid systems design tutorial
Graphic designers use grids to lay out books, posters, websites, whatever. They are the invisible structures into which all the information and images are fitted. Sometimes designers plan their grids before they start hanging content on it. Other times they just start messing around with the content and see what kind of grid emerges.
If it is a multi-page document or a series of leaflets or posters, the grid gets used over and over again. Some designers have favourite grids that they apply to many different projects.
Grids make the work of design easier. They mean you don’t have to start from scratch on every page. You just work with the content to make it fit. Images are reduced or cropped. Text is edited if necessary.
The designer uses the grid to make visual sense of the content. When a grid is well-designed and suited to the content, this works very well. That is why designers use them. If however, the grid is not suited to the content, the images and text can take quite a beating as the designer tries to force them into his grid. When content doesn’t fit the grid, what the designer should do is create a new grid.
Suppose a designer didn’t believe in using other grids. Suppose he was so wedded to his favourite grid that to him all content looked like it fit in his grid. Suppose he even forgot that there could be other grids!
Like designers, we use grids to help us make sense of information.
This is what my favourite archdruid is pointing out in his introduction to this essay.
One of this blog’s central purposes, the attempt to glimpse the future’s patterns in the Rohrshach inkblots of the present, poses a notoriously difficult challenge. Perhaps the worst of the difficulties involved in that attempt, as I’ve suggested here more than once, is the pervasive influence of mythic narratives so deeply ingrained in our culture that few people even notice them. In a retrospective essay on his own work, historian Arnold Toynbee offered a useful warning in this regard: If one cannot think without mental patterns – and, in my belief, one cannot – it is better to know what they are; for a pattern of which one is unconscious is a pattern that holds one at its mercy.
Grids, or as Toynbee calls them, mental patterns are inescapable; they are how we make sense of the world. They are also limiting. If we only have one grid through which we look at the world our understanding of it will be hopelessly flawed. Like designers, we need more than one grid if we are to approach anything near a true understanding of life.
Let’s look at how this practically affects ministry.
One of the grids that is commonly used in churches is God and Church as a brand and people as consumers or potential consumers of that brand. A good example of a church using this grid is Elevation, a fast-growing, outreach-orientated church in North Carolina, USA. Here are a couple excerpts from their very interesting behind-the-scenes blog.
From a post called Details Matter:
…in retail, the words you say or the colors you wear can significantly increase your sales. In other words, if you wear navy and ask customers, “What would you like me to show you today?” you will sell more clothes then you would if you wore yellow and said, “can I help you?”
…
If you could make more money by wearing blue instead of yellow you would wear blue most of the time, right? So if you could make more disciples by re-branding your information area and adding lights, then add some lights! We are selling the most precious commodity, we’re representing the greatest brand, we’ve got an eternal investment in our portfolio, and it’s worth our best effort even to the smallest detail!
Here is some of the ways of doing things that this grid leads to at Elevation (from a post called The Loving Side of Guest Services):
We work so hard because we want people relaxed so that their entire focus is on the gospel being preached. It is accomplished through smiling greeters who are actually glad people show up, parking guys who are the first face of Christ for many and our ushers helping people find the seat where their life has the potential to be changed.
…we do allow children in the auditorium, but if they are under the age of 5 they need to sit toward the back in reserved rows and if they become a distraction they will be asked to leave.
…if someone gets up from their seat and leaves the auditorium during the sermon they will not be allowed to return to their seat. They will be graciously escorted to sit in a seat in the back of the auditorium when they return.
Sounds kind of harsh doesn’t it? The fact that we don’t let people sit anywhere they want or if someone leaves during the sermon we don’t let them return to their seat can sound down right mean, but it’s actually the most loving thing we can do. All it takes is one crying child for someone who needs Christ to be distracted. All it takes is one person walking down the isle for someone’s focus to be taken off of the gospel. The most loving thing we can do is to remove all distractions and allow people to experience the love of Christ.
Whether you agree with these practices or not, all of them are perfectly logical ways of doing things if you are using the Brand/Consumer grid for understanding God and church and people. But what if you were using different grid, such as Family? You would be likely to come up with different practices. Perhaps you would see ‘one crying child’ as a very real part of allowing people to experience the love of Christ.
All grids have limitations. That’s why the bible gives us so many. Each one helps us understand some aspects of the kingdom of God – hey, that’s a grid! Here are a few more off the top of my head:
Body
Bread Dough
Building
Business
Construction Site
Family
Farm
Hen and Chicks
Judge in a Court
Master and Servant
Seed
Shepherd and Sheep
Treasure
Grids are essential to help us understand the world. And as the world changes, there is nothing wrong with designing new grids to gain new understanding. The key is awareness.
Do you know what grid(s) you are using? Do you know their limitations? Are you able to switch to a different grid when it is appropriate? What grids do you find most helpful to your life and ministry right now?
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tags: church,
design,
john michael greer,
leadership
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