AisleOne. A visual journal on design, photography, film, music and culture.
I’m always amazed at the amount of quality work coming out of Australia and New Zealand. Add another firm to the list. Scenario is a multi-diciplinary firm with office in Auckland and Wellington producing stellar work. I’ve also been informed that their site is built on a 12 column—sub-divided in 24 column grid, all aligned to a baseline grid throughout. Very nice!
So as many of you already know, I’m freakin’ obsessed with grids. A lot of designers either don’t want to be bothered with grids or just don’t understand them, so I wanted to spread the love a little.
So I created The Grid System.
It’s basically an ever-growing resource site on the topic of grid systems and anything associated to it, like the golden ratio and baseline grids. My goal for the site is to be a one stop shop for all designers to learn about grid systems, how to design them and how to use them.
The site features links to articles, tools, books as well as templates and other goodies. I’ve also added the ability to show the grid that the site was built on, this way visitors can learn about the structure and how it was applied to the design. Let me tell you, it was a pain to get everything to sit on the grid and baselines and to stay consistent across multiple browsers. As of now, the site lines up perfectly with the grid in Safari and Firefox on a Mac. I assume it would be the same on the PC but I haven’t had the time or a computer to test it. I do plan on making it work in all major browsers on both platforms, even the dreadful IE.
I’ve also partnered up with YouWorkForThem to bring a great collection of books to the site. Over time the site will grow in content (I have a backlog of articles and tools to post) as well as features. I plan to add a forum where people can chat about grid systems and design in general, and other small things like wallpapers. Additionally, I’ve created a Flickr group as an extension of the site.
Check it out and let me know what you hate and what you love. I’d love to know what you think.
It’s one thing to write about how useful and important grids are for a design, it’s another thing to utilize them in a real world project. I recently designed this site for my wife’s event company using a grid system that I’ve developed that also incorporates a baseline grid. It’s very similar to the grid in my Designing Grid Systems For Flash article, the only difference being the vertical height. The grid is 946 pixels wide to accommodate 1024×768 screen resolutions with baselines that are 10 pixels apart. Since this isn’t a Flash site, and vertical scrolling is acceptable, the height is taller for the pages with more content. Continue reading “Grids In The Real World”