Layout and spacing, true at size.
Sign painting lives or dies on the layout. A beautifully pulled letter still reads wrong if the baseline drifts, the cap heights wander, or the spacing crowds at the end of the board. The hard part has never been the brush — it is getting the proportion and the rhythm to hold across a window, a fascia, or a four-foot panel at full size. Grid Maker Pro splits that into the part you plan and the part you letter. Set the baseline, the columns, and the proportion for free in the browser; then use the AR app to anchor that layout onto the real board and letter at size by hand. Free grids for the spacing. The paid app for the surface.
The brush stays yours. The measuring gets faster.
Sign writing is one of the oldest applied lettering crafts, and its layout discipline is older still. None of that is up for replacement here. What the tool removes is the slow, error-prone measuring — chalking guidelines, stepping out spacing, keeping a long line level — so the hours go where the skill is.
What the craft already knows
Signwriters have squared layouts up by hand for as long as there have been shopfronts: chalk lines for the baseline and cap height, a string snapped level, spacing stepped out letter by letter so the last word doesn't crowd the edge. The brush work — the entry and exit of a stroke, the weight of a serif, the consistency of a bowl — is craft that no grid touches.
Robert Bringhurst's account of how letters sit on their lines and relate to one another in The Elements of Typographic Style describes exactly the proportions a signwriter judges by eye every day.1
What Grid Maker Pro adds
The free browser tool gives you the guidelines without the chalk: a baseline grid that fixes where every letter sits and the spacing between lines, and a column grid that sets the margins and even fields of a multi-line board. You resolve the proportion small, where moving a word costs nothing.
Then the AR app carries that layout onto the real board or window. Look through the phone and the lettering is pinned to the surface at full size — so the baseline stays level and the spacing stays even across the whole board, and you letter what you see by hand.
The lines a letter sits on.
Before any stroke, four horizontals decide whether a row of lettering reads clean: the baseline the letters stand on, the x-height of the lowercase, the cap height of the capitals, and the descender line beneath. Get these consistent across the board and the eye reads the words as one even band. The baseline grid sets them once; AR holds them at size.
Cap line — the top of the capitals; keeps initial letters even.
x-height — the body of the lowercase; the single biggest driver of how a line reads.
Baseline — the line every letter stands on; level here means level everywhere.
Descender — the reach below the baseline for g, p, y; sets the gap to the next line.
Plan free. Letter at size.
A sign is committed once and read for years, so the proportion has to be settled before the first stroke. The free browser tool owns the layout; the AR app owns the surface. Three moves.
Set the layout in the browser
Drop your layout into the free tool, lay a baseline grid for the cap height, x-height, and line spacing, and a column grid for the margins. Resolve the spacing while it's free to move.
Free web tool · 82 grids
Anchor it to the board
Open the AR app at the board or window, point the phone, and pin the layout to the surface. It sits locked at full size — no transfer paper, no pounce pattern, no re-measuring.
AR app · paid
Letter it by hand
Pull the strokes straight onto the surface, following the layout through the screen. The spacing and baseline are already true at size, so the work is all brush.
One-shot · brush · your hand
Free grids that hold the spacing.
Even rhythm is what separates a clean sign from an amateur one, and rhythm is geometry — the relationship between letters, lines, and margins. These overlays live in the free browser tool. Josef Müller-Brockmann's Grid Systems in Graphic Design is the standard account of using a grid to organise type and space deliberately rather than by feel.2
Baseline grid
Fix where every letter sits and the spacing between rows of text. The first guideline a signwriter sets.
→Column grid
Set the margins and divide the board into even fields for multi-line layouts and aligned blocks.
→Golden ratio
Check the height-to-width proportion of a logo, monogram, or panel where the relationship has to be exact.
The AR app does what a browser can't.
The web tool plans the layout. The app puts it on the surface. Built by Sujith Puthran, a working artist of more than fifteen years, the AR app anchors a layout over your real board or window and lets you letter at full scale on-device. The 82 grids stay free forever in the browser — the app is the separate, paid product for the surface, and it never paywalls the planning.
Grid Maker Pro AR
Pin any layout to your board, fascia, or window and letter it by hand at full size — no transfer paper, no pounce pattern, no projector. Android on Google Play, with iOS planned. No account to start, and your layout never leaves the device. The free tier gives you three AR traces of your own layout every month plus all 82 overlays, so you can prove it on a real board before paying.
Free tier 3 AR traces / month + 82 overlays · Paid $29.99/yr · $6.99/mo · $79 lifetime
What lettering artists reach it for.
I still snap a chalk line for the brush work, but I stopped stepping out spacing on the board. I lay the whole word on a baseline grid on my phone, anchor it to the fascia, and the kerning is already even from the first letter to the last. The brush is still mine — what I got back is the half-hour I used to lose making sure the final word wouldn't run off the edge.
Glass is the worst surface to transfer onto — no tooth for chalk, and a pounce pattern slides. Anchoring the layout through the phone and gilding straight to what I see on the screen keeps the baseline dead level across a long shopfront. The proportion is set in the browser before I ever open the size, so on the glass it's all gilding.
The questions letterers ask.
How do I lay out lettering true on a board or window at full size?
Lay out the proportion small first, then scale it to the surface. In the free browser tool, drop a baseline grid and a column grid over your layout to lock the cap height, x-height, baseline, and the rhythm of the words. Then use the Grid Maker Pro AR app to anchor that layout to the real board or window through the phone — the lettering sits pinned to the surface at full size, and you chalk or paint the strokes by hand following what you see. The grid keeps the proportion honest; the AR locks it to the surface so spacing doesn't drift as you work across the board.
Does this replace hand lettering?
No, and it is not meant to. Sign painting is a hand craft — the brush control, the pull of a stroke, the weight of a serif are all the painter's. What a grid and AR tracing fix is the part that is measurement, not lettering: getting the baseline level, the cap height consistent, and the spacing even across a long board before a single stroke is laid. Lettering artists have squared layouts up by hand for as long as there have been signs; this is the same job with the measuring done faster.
Which grids should a lettering artist plan with?
Start with the baseline grid to fix where every letter sits and the line spacing between rows of text. Add a column grid to set the margins and divide the board into even fields for multi-line layouts. For a logo or a monogram where proportion has to be exact, the golden ratio overlay checks the relationship between height and width. All three are free overlays in the browser tool, stackable over your reference layout.
Is the AR app the same as the free grids?
They are two products. The free web tool gives you all 82 composition and typography grids in any browser, with no signup, free forever — that is where you plan proportion and spacing. The AR app is the separate paid product that anchors your layout over the real board or window so you can letter at full scale by hand, which a browser cannot do. The app's free tier is three AR traces of your own layout each month plus all 82 overlays; unlimited is $29.99 a year, $6.99 a month, or $79 lifetime. Android on Google Play, iOS planned, on-device with no account to start.
References
- Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Hartley & Marks. ISBN 978-0-88179-211-9. The standard account of how letters relate to their lines and to one another.
- Müller-Brockmann, Josef. Grid Systems in Graphic Design. Niggli (1981). ISBN 978-3-7212-0145-1. Using a grid to organise type and space deliberately rather than by eye.
- Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting (Della Pittura, 1435). Penguin Classics (1991). ISBN 978-0-14-043331-3. The velo — squaring a design onto a surface accurately at scale.
- Bouleau, Charles. The Painter’s Secret Geometry. Harcourt, Brace & World (1963). Proportion and the geometry of layout in the picture field.
Get the layout true on the board.
Set the baseline, columns, and proportion for free in the browser, then anchor the layout to the real board or window with the AR app and letter at full size by hand. No transfer paper, no pounce pattern, no upload — your layout stays on your device.