Before we get too far into building our grid and working with it and dropping content into it, I do want to talk about just a couple of basic graphic design rules. And these will be very helpful, and they're really, really simple. But they're important to know about before we start composing. We all know about optical illusions. We can be shown an optical illusion like this one. And what we see is not what in fact exactly is. Optical illusions have everything to do with perception and not with reality. Line A is actually the same length as line B, but to most of us line A looks longer. That's an optical illusion, and that is a common error in perception. And these kinds of things are important to know about in graphic design. Let's say we're designing a poster, or a flyer, or an annual report cover, and we want to put a title on it, we might think that a good start is to find the absolute center and put the title there. So we bisect our rectangle. It's equal top and bottom. That's our horizon. We drop our title onto the horizon. And we think that's pretty good, although the problem with that is that it looks bottom heavy. It feels as if BIG SALE is kind of sinking to the bottom of the composition. That's not the natural place to put the dominant element of our design. We want to move it up. And that's what designers do, that's what we know that we should do, so that it feels more natural. I've heard a lot of theories about why this is true. I was at conference once and someone told a group of us that the reason we move things above the horizon is that our ancestors lived in trees and were constantly scanning the savanna for dangerous animals. I think that's kind of a bunch of hooey. Who knows, who cares? All we know is that when we look at things that are well-designed, this is the most common practice. It feels right, it feels natural. And it's based on common perception, it's how things feel they should be. There's another principle, or rule, that you may be familiar with, especially if you have a background in photography or fine art, and that's called the rule of thirds. And it's also very simple. And it's also very powerful. If we take any rectangle and divide it into 9 equal parts, that's three rows and three columns, it's the intersections of those parts that are visually the most interesting. I can't tell you why this is, but I know that it's true. And I know that it's one of those things that you'll see virtually everywhere. Everyone does this. This is the mark of professional filming. This is the mark of good photography. Here's a screenshot of Angelina Jolie on 60 Minutes. And you can see that she is framed absolutely in the sweet spot. The reason I think this is important, there's a little history involved here. At one point at the University of Colorado I co-managed a lab, we checked out video cameras to students. They would take them out for the weekend, shoot hundreds of hours of interviews, come back on Monday morning with footage that looked like this. And it was heartbreaking because there was no fix. It feels awkward. It feels out of balance. It feels amateurish and rough. If we look at the fellow in this frame, poor guy, he's nowhere near the aesthetics we spot at one of those intersections that the rule of thirds tells us, is the place he should have been targeted. As a good friend of mine at the University of Colorado said, that center spot, even though if it feels like the natural place for people to center of things, actually that's where beauty goes to die. It's the least interesting part of our composition. Go figure. These are very simple things to remember, there's only two of them, but they'll help you when you think about composing your grid and where to put important elements in that grid. So let's just review. Keep major content above the absolute center of your composition otherwise things will look bottom heavy, unless that's what you want. When applicable, use the rule of thirds to make your work look livelier and more professional. That's it, two rules, you're good to go. Now let's start designing.