Grid Calculator 1.3

grid-calculator

A new version (1.3) of the excellent Grid Calculator has been released for the Mac. The main feature of this upgrade is the ability to calculate grids for web design. It’s the only stand-alone app that I know of that supports both print and web. Pretty sweet. I’ve been told that the PC version is coming soon.

Here are some more new features:

• Inches and Points support.
• More paper sizes (DIN, ANSI and Arch).
• Great new time-saving feature “Copy Settings” introduced – NO more back and forth!
• Modified “Quick conversion” section.
• Web designer friendly, use Points in 72 ppi resolution and calculate your grid.

Get Grid Calculator 1.3 for Mac OS X        

Grid Calculator by Designers Bookshop

grid_calculator.jpg

As you know, I’m a big grid system user. One of the most time consuming, and sometimes frustrating, aspects of grid systems is calculating and creating them. If you’re new to grids, I suggest you do it all by hand at first to learn the process. But once you get the hang of it, and understand it, an application can speed the process up considerably and save you valuable time.

Over the last few months I’ve been using an app called Grid Calculator, developed by Designers Bookshop, to do all my calculating for me so that I could concentrate on other things. It’s available for both Mac and PC and helps with calculating correct leading, margins, gutters, row space and “f” height for image placement. It also includes a handy conversion tool and document proportions.

It’s currently aimed more towards editorial design, but it could still be used for web design with some minor calculating on the side. Hopefully they expand the next version to include more features for web specific design.

I figured that a lot of you would be interested in this app, so I’ve contacted the company and they’ve agreed to give AisleOne readers a 10% discount. The offer is only valid this week: Monday, April 27th to Friday, May 1st. To get the discount, enter in the following code upon checkout : Baseline.

Enjoy and happy gridding.