The principle of the grid -- Grids are everywhere -- The grid in cultural context -- Architecture -- Music / Essay by John L Walters -- Furniture design / Case study by David Phillips -- Fine art / Essay by Martin Herbert -- Interior design -- Screenplays / Essay by Damian Wayling -- Digital design -- Town planning -- Conceptual art -- The psychology of the grid / Jason Wright -- Wim Crouwel -- Simon Esterson -- Linda van Deursen -- David Carson -- Peter Gill -- Krieger I Sztatecsny -- Cartlidge Levene -- Wendelin Hess -- Hamish Muir -- Ellen Lupton -- John Maeda -- Making the grid / Rupert Bassett -- Breaking the grid / Frank Gehry.

The grid is one of the most powerful and influential weapons in the design armoury. Its subtlety and flexibility account for its endless fascination for designers, in that it can be on the one hand a stultifying drag on creativity and on the other a launching platform from which the greatest ideas take flight. The designer and the grid covers these and many more professional issues, but the book's unique appeal is that it puts the concept in a far wider context, drawing from the disciplines of music, architecture and even screenwriting to make its points. The profound and far reaching implications of understanding and using grids are explored in provocative but accessible style, touching on politics, philosophy, linguistics and ethics in a way that addresses a general audience interested in design and its applications, not just professionals. Designed and written with all the subtlety, passion and fascination for layers of meaning of which the book itself speaks, The designer and the grid is a work to which the reader will return again and again, absorbed in the debate and ensnared in its visual eloquence. There is no doubt that the book sheds new light on this vital subject.