Let’s turn a critical eye on the lowly bastard measure.

We’ll start with a definition … in case someone has strayed upon this who probably shouldn’t have.

Every newspaper has a grid. Common grids are five or six columns wide, although grids of 10 or 12 are used, and hybrid approaches should be more fully explored here in the future. A standard newspaper column (one leg of type in a news story) usually is placed on the grid, so that a six-column grid has six legs of type if the story stretches across the entire page. This is probably the most common set up. If a 10- or 12-column grid were used, the leg of type would stretch across two grid columns. A bastard measure is any leg of type that strays from the standard width in use in the newspaper.

If you ever stumble across a truly small-town newspaper that obviously doesn’t pay well or care about how the newspaper looks, you will probably see more bastard measures. The reasons for this stem from inexperienced designers who would rather fit a story than trim it or ponder about different design possibilities. Time is tight at a small newspaper. Editors stuck doing layout don’t have the same luxury of time or inclinations that designers do at larger papers.

The danger in using bastard measures is that not only are the stories difficult to read, but the design itself also loses its coherence, and the paper loses the appearance of credibility.
Readers like order. They like good design.

The danger in refusing to stray from the grid, though, in my opinion, is that sizing of photos is more limited. The page can also lose dynamic tension and variety.
More and more, on section fronts, I am warming to the bastard measure.

I credit the [1] San Jose Mercury News for focusing my attention on it. Browse a recent collection of their front pages [2] here. I noticed after their last redesign that they seemed to pay less and less attention on section fronts to the standard column width. And often I liked the result.

What has the Mercury News done, though, that makes it work?

I noticed a few other trends with their front page design. The designers there rarely inset information and photos into their legs of type. And there are often plenty of narrow columns of breakout information combined with the wider bastard measures. This information is not inset, but set alongside.

Here are a few tips for using bastard measures:

• Keep them to open pages and section fronts
• If you are going to run a bastard measure on several stories, look for ways to use the same bastard measure for both. If you find you have given yourself one story that is 13p3 wide and another that is 15p2, see if you can use a middle ground for both. Sometimes I will use a lot of stories at 14p or 16p or so, effectively making that my standard for the day, and have just one that remains the normal width.
• Don’t worry about keeping your standard columns on the grid. Just keep them to the right width. Use photo size to make up the difference.
• Conversely, try sticking to the grid but varying your column widths. Personally, I have had not had as much luck with this approach, but in theory, it’s great. I find that the standard distance between the use of rules on the page and other elements such as legs of type inevitably forces me off the grid.

Who else does bastard measures well? I’d like to hear of other good examples.