Why I hate Grid Systems...

..and why I hate formulaic website design.

Maybe this article would better be called, “why I hate what grid systems stand for in the design world”. Designers (especially web designers) these days seem obsessed with grid based design. While I LIKE the look that grid based designs I disagree with this formula based approach to web site design.

To demystify what I’m driving at here: I think that that good designers should be able to balance a page without using a PSD grid template. I get the point, and 960.gs (for example) is a great resource (i don’t personally USE their grid system - at least not consciously) but it’s like providing tools to people who really ought to be able to balance a page without a grid in a PSD. I know that some people who ARE capable will use these grids also, but something about trying to simplify the design process to this degree bothers me. The issue here is that we (the industry) are trying to apply a formula to web site design.. which devalues the designer (this really irks me, since I AM the designer and this is how i feed myself!).

It’s like giving photographers digital cameras that can take 20 frames a second at 12 megapixels.. the mentality becomes “who needs a professional photographer?” - we’ll just photograph EVERYTHING and then edit out the crap later! Formulaic web site design conforms to the same paradym, people have a list of rules that they follow in order to create a good design for a website. This idea works very well for a while, but you end up with a portfolio of websites that only differ in colour - which in the long run, is silly. No one wants the entire internet to look the same (in different colour casts)!

Each design should be prepared to match the brief. It should be well thought out and designed to complement any existing brand. While this is perfectly possible using an online colour scheme generator, PSD grid system, CSS Framework etc … these are NOT necessary components in the process - sometimes they are useful tools to complement your eye as a designer, but i really believe that too many people are interested in how well a site fits a grid - whether it’s colour scheme can be justified mathematical etc.

I’ll openly admit that this website does not fit a grid (at least not by design) .. and i think part of the reason for this is, as a designer, I like to judge the balance of my design by (shock! horror!) looking at it. Photoshop’s nudge functionality is your friend, and I often nudge things back and forth until they feel like they are balanced. And given that the brain often plays tricks on you I actually believe that whether I think that a page looks and feels balanced is far more important than each element being equidistant from it’s surrounding elements with 1% padding and a 28% width.

To illustrate this, i’ve attached a small screenshot of the central section of my recent work page, with overlaying grid lines, which I obviously didn’t use when designing the site. The point here is, the dark grey section where my CV/timeline exists is supposed to recede into the page, hence the drop shadow. In order to further accent this effect the space for content has 1em less width on either side (from memory.. don’t hold me to that) - they’re called vanishing points; perspective kids!