Designing in Spreads
Books and magazines should be designed as spreads (facing pages). The two-page spread, rather than the individual page, is the main unit of design. Left and right margins become inside and outside margins. Page layout programs assume that the inside margins are the same on both the left- and right-hand pages, yielding a symmetrical, mirror-image spread. You are free, however, to set your own margins and create an asymmetrical spread.
Multi-column grid
While single-column grids work well for simple documents, multicolumn grids provide flexible formats for publications that have a complex hierarchy or that integrate text and illustrations. The more columns you create, the more flexible your grid becomes. You can use the grid to articulate the hierarchy of the publication by creating zones for different kinds of content. A text or image can occupy a single column or it can span several. Not all the space has to be filled.
Designing with a hang line
In addition to creating vertical zones with the columns of the grid, you can also divide the page horizontally. For example, an area across the top can be reserved for images and captions, and body text can “hang” from a common line. Graphic designers call this a hang line. In architecture, a horizontal reference point like this is known as a datum.
Modular Grid
A modular grid has consistent horizontal divisions from top to bottom in addition to vertical divisions from left to right. These modules govern the placement and cropping of pictures as well as text. In the 1950s and 1960s, Swiss graphic designers including Gerstner, Ruder, and Müller-Brockmann devised modular grid systems like the one shown here.
Use a modular grid to arrange a text in as many ways as you can. By employing just one size of type and flush left alignment only, you will construct a typographic hierarchy exclusively by means of spatial arrangement. To make the project more complex, begin adding variables such as weight, size, and alignment.
I found this website extremely useful on different grid layouts you find in different media. How the different structure and layout of have an effect on how our eyes focus around the page, thats why I believe that graphic designers initially control how the readers look and read a page. The modular grid I found most interesting on how it has a lot of structure to follow however depending on how many columns there are it can leave room for a lot of flexibility to make the page look more interesting.
