If you use a grid, the worst-case scenario is that your design will be solid but formulaic and unimaginative.

If you don't use a grid, the worst-case scenario is that your design will be amateurish, confusing, and unstructured.

Use a grid – unless you really know what you're doing.

Quick reminders

• This book was published 11 years ago: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Breaking-Grid-Graphic-Workshop/dp/1592531253
• This book was published 55 years ago: https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Systems-Graphic-Design-Communication/dp/3721201450/

I wrote an entire article about how much I disagree with this.

Developers must love you....

Grids help to communicate. It helps development. It helps the design development. It destroys creativity. So what kind of an designer are you? You work in a big team? Use grids. You are one designer and have the clients who pay for an creative design approach? Don't use grids or use grids.

Grids are helping to create a vertical and horizontal rhythm to your design, specially when you design with a lot of text. Grids are crucial on a macro typographic level so you should use it. Without grids you can easily design crap that nobody understands.

So it depends on what you up to.

Agree. We do use grids, but we make a bespoke one for every project and it's not always an even number of equal width columns - so they're more guides than grids I guess? You need alignment aids to help with structure, but you can't blindly pick one out of a box and design around it, your grid/guides should be born of the right design solution for the interface you are designing.

Overuse of standard/the same grids is also a major contributing factor of the homogenisation of web design.

To me it sounds like you're talking more so about art than design. In design, there is nothing wrong with repeating a solution if it truly solves the problem.

You can argue convention, UX and design patterns here – but what are we really trying to do? As designers, surely we are trying to push the boundaries, try new things and get a higher level of engagement from our audience?

As a designer, your goal should be to come up with a solution to a problem. As an artist, your goal should be to push boundaries and ask questions. I think this quote from John Maeda says it well:

"Great art makes you wonder; great designs make things clear."

https://twitter.com/johnmaeda/status/525586459974438912

Interesting post, thank you.

Of course, its another case of "it depends", there is basically no element in design process that is ALWAYS appropriate for every project. Aside from talking to your client and users about their problems and goals.

Also I'm interested in your motivation to be a "trendsetter", some might say that putting your own needs and biases into your work so much, is a little egotistical. Although I only say this because I am actually probably motivated by the same thing, but more in denial about it :-)

It's certainly nice to do something crazy once in a while and not always use the same grid but...

Grids are also used to make sure the design is maintainable. Sometimes it's impossible for other designers/developers to know all about the philosophy/values/importance of the design. However, they're always able to 'learn' the grid or how the UI kit works. It also introduces a big risk for both the designer and the client.

Most importantly if your own 'brilliant' design doesn't perform as well as you'd like. Do you approach the client to recommend changing it to something a bit more 'normal'?

Design != Art.

We use systems because they make sense. Different for the sake of different is trivial at best, dangerous at worst.

Having said that, if the work isn't commercial, or the work is just for you, go nuts.

I use flexbox and I can't go back

Almost agree, but totally disagree. Make your own grids, experiment with modular scales, try applying that same harmonic ratios to your spacing as your type hierarchies and see what starts to happen. Build a grid to establish pattern and visual harmony, and then intentionally break that pattern for emphasis and surprise. Yes basic grids are boring, so don't do that. If you really know what you are doing, you will use grids.

I thought this was going to be about thegrid.io.

When it comes to visual layout, I think you will never ever escape employing some sort of 'grid'. While one may not purposely be 'using' it while doing their design or during execution, I would argue that it's still not detached from working within the same framework. Foundation courses on visual communication and systems always have grids in its curriculum and for good reason (read Josef Müller Brockmann). As they say, the more you understand something, the better, easier and more potential there is in breaking it, but it is never, i think, without its influence. Visual design is all about rhythm, scale, repetition and so on... use it or not, you're bound by this 2D 'force' on whatever it is you're creating– a la gravity. And there is no escaping the influence of what we've seen before. Elements on whatever it is we are making are playing by the 'rules' we design.

Now if we're going to talk exclusively about grid frameworks and systems employed on the web , e.g. the 960 grid, or designing thinking about the end-format (responsive etc) which is why these 'grid frameworks' exist in the first place, then i do agree that by using them it seems to come with a pre-packaged design. The results are obviously similar– homogenised indeed. This whole 'homogenisation' of the web thing is a different conversation altogether. But a lot of the 'edgy' and 'cool' sites are heavily based on print and visual design paradigms (just take a look at site inspire, and those really neat typography driven sites). Um, so yeah, we're all using grids subconsciously.

TL DR; be happy, love life, drink beer, smile ¯_(ツ)_/¯

so much for my first post/reply ever on DN! :cheers:

I've known web designers who didn't use a grid to lay their stuff out, just willy nilly with the stylus. No surprise to me, they made terrible stuff.

You need to start with a Grid to have an educated understanding of when and where to break it. This has been a fundamental part of graphic design since the birth of print which is now translated into digital design . This is a good book on the subject - https://www.amazon.com/Making-Breaking-Grid-Graphic-Workshop/dp/1592531253

Grids help us to structure and organise information so that users can digest information more comfortably.

I do however agree with avoiding css grids. I follow a grid with my designs visually but I do not use a css foundation for any of my websites.

Your design agency's site uses a grid: https://weare2ndfloor.com/ There's literally a class named "main-grid".

You should read/look into Hundertwasser. I often wonder what the world would like had his ideas caught on, and put an end to modernism/modernist architecture:

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-straight-line-is-a-godless-line/

I haven’t found one single visual design in the entirety of Western design history that does not imply a grid structure.

I disagree. Use a grid, but know when to break the rules. I always start with a grid for all my print and web design work but I also know that there are times I need cheat a block of content and I figure out the best way to doit within the reasonable constraints of my grid and current layout. The one thing to never do is use the SAME grid for everything you do. Let the content drive the design.

That’s why I wrote Gridless.

It starts with a base cell of 20px where you can build anything on. Usually buttons have 30px height, borders are 2px and padding is 4px (2*4+2=10). Every dimension (width, height) is divisible by 10.

The idea is not to have a predefined grid system, but to build one each time.