design grid system

It's amazing how times change. You can look back 40 years and fashions and styles have changed dramatically. Look back at web designs only a few years and styles have changed just as much. Its interesting however that the fundamental rules for layout design still apply today, and date back to the 1960s.

In 1961 a Swiss graphic designer and teacher, Josef Muller-Brockmann published his book 'Grid Systems in Graphic Design'. Although traditionally intended for printed materials, the system created can still apply to web design.

Look at a newspaper, a magazine or a block of buildings and overlay a series of columns and rows - the grid system is everywhere, ensuring things look and feel right. Grids are a standard way of organising things visually, from bricks to letter, understanding how to create harmonious arrangements based on a grid allows designers to communicate better.

Grid design is, for me, the most important part of any web design and corporate identity. Understanding the proportional relationships, white space and composition are all vital in constructing a good design. Grid systems give everything in a design a purpose, nothing is laid out randomly, yet placed precisely where you intend. From basic text spacing, multiples of the sizes can be used to calculate everything from margins to image sizes.

So when you look at the world again, pay attention to the grids around us - more importantly the good ones! Check out our design portfolio for some amazing designs.