Never was the type of person to spend $90 on a look-book/coffee-table book, but bless those who make things like this possible I guess \-_-/
They're a public agency. Anyone is entitled to "legally" distribute this material.
Presumably, since it is a work-product of the US government, classified information is also technically in the public domain, but is protected by mechanisms other than claiming copyright.
B) used bookstores sell coffee table books for dirt cheap sometimes, check it out if your taste is more flexible
C) wow page 11 bothers me. Why, why, why… the grid is there for a reason!! Just make it line up with the grid, oh my god
EDIT: page 39 is also a really neat tip, for anyone writing a book. TL;DR: format your cover as a variation of your content pages. Might apply to websites and their splash pages, too! Certainly stands in contrast to the current SOP for SV startup splash pages
Visual weight sometimes dictates a slightly less than perfect alignment.
Thank you for bringing back this memory with your comment!
Make what line up? LOL! I'm sympathetic to the outrage, but happy to note that measuring the world should never cross over to wishing the world fits a unit measurement.
The grid is a ruler, not a form-factor.
The ruler's unit is 1/3 of the stroke width, as explained in the caption on pg. 11.
Why the stroke width? Presumably because it's a constant for the logotype. From the stroke you can build the grid and describe all the other dimensions.
You could choose any multiple for the stroke. So why 3?
Zero-one-infinity = 3
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_one_infinity_rule
(I'm being glib)
Because it looks right. Because 0 is not enough. 1 just begs for a sub-unit. 2 is merely twice 1. More than 3 is gratuitous.
"Three is the number thou shalt count and the number of the count shall be three..."
Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch