I'm old school enough to still sketch page layouts and decide on fonts and sizes, leading etc. on a piece of blank A4 before I start. Mind you, the person who taught me would have no truck with baseline grids either, on account that choosing font sizes and leading correctly obviates one.
That's quite the hard-line position; was this person brought up on hot-metal letterpress or something?
Hot metal typesetting was one of the most beautiful things to watch.
A Monotype caster in motion is a thing of wonder, beauty, and squirty molten type metal; I'm very glad that there are still
nuttersenthusiasts around to demonstrate their use. I've never seen a Linotype in action up close, only on film, but they're almost as impressive.
Most of the older guys I worked with at $academicpublisher had started out as compositors; even though they were mostly printing with photosetting machines at that point, they were all taught to compose on the Monotype. I do think it's interesting that in the past 10-15 years letterpress modules have gained in popularity on typography and graphic design courses, and a fair number have added sessions as part of the introductory modules.
