A NEW method developed by Marcus Gärde to produce gridsystems based on old books and scrolls.During his research when writing his first book, The Way of Typography, Garde found out that old bibles and scrolls where not designed in the same manner as todays books – they where actually more complex!
In fact, the baselinegrid always fitted perfectly on the page. And even the gutter was in proportion to the lead. For exampel, in Gutenbergs B36 the gutter is 1/3 of the outer margin. The inner margin is 1/2 of the outer. The upper margin is 1/2 of the lower. The typographic area contains 6 modules and each of these modules are divided 6 times. That creates the 36 lines of text. In Gutenbergs first book, B42, the 6 modules where each divided 7 times. Therefore 42 lines of text.

After Marcus had examined the books, he created a step-to-step guide howe to create a perfect gridsystem,
where all the baselines fit inside the page and the gutter is based on the proportion of the lead.
He released this method in his book The Way of Typography august 2007.

Actually really awesome tutorial (after all the history) for a nice old-fashioned layout if anyone cares.

edit: I realized that this is great if you have absolute control over the production, but if your printer doesn’t do full-bleed perfectly, you’re wasting a lot of time.