Most people think that creative work has a better chance of completion if there are fewer constraints. But, working within structure helps because it eliminates some options and through elimination comes focus. Despite what we think about ‘freedom’ in creative work, structure is everywhere.
In graphic design, we use grids to give us an underlying structure on which we build interesting and varied layouts. Newspapers, magazines, books, and the web all have underlying structure (columns and rows) that provide a certain consistency for how content spatially relates. Structure helps the creator make decions and the reader interpret the work.
In comics, panels are typically laid out according to an underlying grid – again, of horizontal and vertical divisions. Rather than this grid ‘getting in the way’ of creativity, it unlocks it – it defines the rules under which most work can be made and a certainty that the reader will use past experience with such grids to be able to read and interpret the creator’s story or message.
Beyond physical structure, there is conceptual structure, too. Stories themselves have structure. Beginnings, Middles, Ends. They have a central protagonist and antagonist. Supporting characters. They have 3 acts (or 4, depending on who you talk to), each with a different purpose and goal. Get all these right and you’ve got a story that most people will understand. Structure doesn’t, however, guarantee a good story.
That’s not to say that we don’t, can’t, or shouldn’t break the rules sometimes. But, you can only break something that wasn’t broken in the first place. When we break the grid or the structure, it’s often for a reason: we want to surprise, we want variation, we want to emphasise a feeling. But, largely, breaking structure is the exception not the rule.