Grids are extremely important to anything involving communication and design. In order to communicate something to an audience they must understand what it is you've designed for them. This is where grids come in. They assist the designer in getting their point across as well as the reader in understand that point. A good grid makes it easier on the designer and reader as well. With a set grid the designer can easily flow from one spread to the next, or even just from one paragraph to the next. And it helps the viewer to navigate from page to page, whether thats on a website or in print, and also helps them to get a clear understanding of what they're reading or looking at.

I found a really great example of a modified grid in the Winter 2000 edition of Critique magazine. In the Do Nothing article by Kim Levine, there is a huge oval shaped gap in the two column grid that makes absolutely no sense, until you read the article. It's about a designer that was hired to turn a butcher shop into a coffee house, and chose not to change a thing. The point of the article is that even though the designer "did nothing" to the space, he wasn't lazy or careless, he made the decision to do nothing only because he saw how it would affect the future of that cafe, which was very positively. The break in the grid just emphasizes that very thing. The designer chose to leave that spot blank, but it wasn't out of laziness, it was to make a point. Even where there is nothing, you can get something.