unigrid.app
A browser instrument for composing the Unigrid B6 sheet, and printing it at full size.
Both sides of the Gropius House folder, set in unigrid.app on photographs taken there, and drawn by its own code.
What it is
unigrid.app draws a Unigrid B6 sheet at full size, 420 by 594 mm, and lets you compose on it in the browser: modules of 84 by 80 points on intervals of 12 by 10 points, twelve columns, seventeen exposed rows, the title band at the head and the 25 point bar at the foot. You put photographs, words, colour and divisional bars into whole modules, or into halves of them.
It runs at unigrid.app, it is free, and your sheet stays on your device.
How to use it
A placement that does not sit on the lattice is refused, so what you compose is a Unigrid composition rather than a drawing that resembles one.
Choose a space
One or more whole modules, or halves of them.
Put something in it
A photograph, a colour, words, or a divisional bar. Drag it to move it, take its corner to resize it, and pull it past the margin to run it off the paper.
Set the title band at the head, then turn the sheet over and compose the back the same way.
Print it
Both sides as a PDF at full size, or either side on its own as an image.
What it exports
PDF
420 × 594 mm
Both sides, with its page size set to the trim, its type in Helvetica, and each photograph written in as the JPEG bytes it already is.
PNG
4,961 × 7,016 px
Either side at 300 dpi, which is 4,961 by 7,016 pixels on B6.
SVG
Vector
Either side, to carry on working in vector software.
One limit worth knowing: the PDF sets Latin letters only, and the PNG and the SVG carry everything.
Where Unigrid comes from
Unigrid is a publication system designed by Massimo Vignelli, begun in 1977 and set down in a specification in 1985: one fixed module, fixed intervals, and a field of whole modules that every sheet is composed on. KhannaOffice reconstructed that specification and adapted it for the web. This instrument is built on the package that came out of that work, and it draws its geometry from the same numbers.
The reconstruction and its derivation are set out in the research paper; the package itself has its own product record.
Open it
unigrid.app needs only a browser.
unigrid.appOpen- Sheet
- Unigrid B6, 420 by 594 mm: twelve columns of 84 by 80 point modules, seventeen exposed rows.
- Exports
- PDF, PNG and SVG.
- Price
- Free.
- Your sheet
- Kept on your device. Nothing on it is uploaded.
- Status
- Beta
- Published