Web Design Using Grids: Tools and Inspiration
Rochester OliveiraWhen I started this web designing thing all my work just didn’t look “professional”. It was pretty, nice colors, nice fonts, nice bevel/emboss effects…but something was annoying and I didn’t know what.
Then I found out.
Grids are one of the smallest differences between good and great design. It is quite easy to find a way to realign aspects of the design that give it a completely different look. Of course we have also other spacing adjustments but when you put things inside grids everything tends to look much better.
Today we’ll find out together why they make such a difference, who is doing it right, and which tools you can use to have a better grid.
So, grid systems?
There are a few ways to group elements on page. Color, size, alignment. But surely alignment is the least utilized of them. Maybe because there isn’t a “group tool” like we have color tools or size tools (in Photoshop, for example, is quite hard to align things in a rational way).
Then they come to save us.
Grid systems give an easy and safe way to better organize your content, so you don’t need to worry too much about it. Things will be like playing with Lego bricks from now on :)
They have a few preset sizes of blocks and preset number of maximum blocks per line. So what you have to do is to say “hey I want three small blocks and one medium on first line, but one big and one small on the second.” Pretty easy, huh?
Let’s see who has done their homework
Portfolio-like grid: Sylvan-Olliver.com
It isn’t that hard to see that this website is based on a grid, right? Since there’s not a lot of text, the images act like blocks and we have an isolated block as menu.
Mixed blocks: Rivers&Robots
Here you may notice that on the first line the blocks are one size and on the second they change. Because of their good grid system everything looks symmetrical and right (otherwise something would just look strange).
Clean and responsive: Upperdog.se
They have a quite simple structure, but the best part is that their grid system adjusts to screen size and when it detects mobile resolutions it resizes contents blocks so users will get a way better interface.
Lot of content: Drupal.org
Drupal is one of the best CMS’ in the world. But it has to show a lot of content on its homepage. Without a nice grid system all this content would look a mess. And here is the magic, you can see which content is related to which even on this small screenshot (where you just can’t read the content).
Tools
I’m sure you want to use a grid system as soon as possible. So I’ll show you some cool tools to make your life easier.
960.gs
Easy and one of the most used grid systems. A great starting point.
1140px – cssGrid.net
Responsive and easy to use also. If you just want to get started with responsive grid systems, take a look at this one.
Golden Grid
One of the most powerful grid systems. If you want a complete solution go with this one.
BootStrap
Project from Twitter that is also a complete CSS toolkit. Pretty cool :)
Yet Another Multicolumn Layout - YAML.de
Slim framework with accessibility concerns
BlueTrip.org
Collection with some cool tools, this project is much more than an ordinary grid system. Worth checking out!
ElasticCSS.com
As name says, it focus in easier implementation of fluid, elastic and multicolumn interfaces.
YUI 2 – Grids CSS
4kb file that allows you to do A LOT.
1 Line CSS Grid Framwork (Experiment)
It’s not a framework per se, but has a nice logic and worth checking to remember that sometimes a solution is way easier than it seems.
Are you hungry yet?
So have I missed anything? Do you have any other nice tool to share? I’ll be glad to hear from you via comments!
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Aaron @ iamcreative.me
Posted 144 days ago 7Good post, I am a big fan of the 960 grid system.
but you forgot to add my site to the list?
http://iamcreative.me
Based on the grid system and is also responsive… Try resizing the browser window! ☺
Aaron @ iamcreative.me
Posted 144 days ago 8! shameless self promotion !
Rochester Oliveira
Posted 144 days ago 10Hey Aron, I forgive your self promotion, since your portfolio is pretty well done indeed :)
I would just center things in “mobile” screen sizes, so it’ll be prettier.. But it’s really good this way.
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Swamykant
Posted 140 days ago 11Hi Aaron
You have an excellent Website. The look is awesome. great work.
Dave
Posted 145 days ago 6Nice. Maybe I’m a bit old school, but I never thought people designed without grids. But I’ve always used graph paper for my rough sketches. I am going to check out the 960 grid right now. I’ve downloaded it and looks interesting.
Rochester Oliveira
Posted 144 days ago 9That’s a nice idea, Dave!
But 960 is a really good start point, I’ve started with grid systems from it myself and found it really useful!
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aditia
Posted 145 days ago 5there is also some online grid generator in case dont’t want to dig in the whole framework
Rochester Oliveira
Posted 131 days ago 14Hi aditia,
Yeah, I should have covered them also, thanks for your tip.
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Shaquil Oliver
Posted 145 days ago 3Grids are what is needed to make your design look great. It has more precision and accuracy to it.
Rochester Oliveira
Posted 131 days ago 13Hi Shaquil,
And they really speed up development process. So there’s a lot of reasons for using them ;)
Thanks!
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Shekhzz
Posted 145 days ago 2I’m a regular visitor of this blog, and whenever I come to this blog – I’ve got some tremendous information. And today is also the same day as always. Thanks for sharing information with us… :)
Rochester Oliveira
Posted 131 days ago 12Hey Shekhzz,
I’m glad you liked, and keep coming, we have much more great content to go.
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Kevin Riemens
Posted 145 days ago 1Where’s Blueprint? http://www.blueprintcss.org/
One of the best ones out there!
If you combine it with HTML5 boilerplate you have a POWERFULL starting ground for your website…
Rochester Oliveira
Posted 145 days ago 4Hey Kevin!
I think I could have explained BlueTip a litlle better. Actually, it has a lot of frameworks mixed and improved, including there BluePrint :) But yeah, I should have talked a little bit about it.
Thanks for pointing out!
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