molly.com
Tuesday 20 December 2005
Thinking Outside the Grid
AFTER SEVERAL YEARS of promising Jeffrey Zeldman I’d write an article for A List Apart, I finally fulfilled my empty promise. You can read Thinking Outside the Grid in ALA no. 209, which is in fact the last issue for 2005.
Wshew, slipped it in there, didn’t I?
I actually owe the ALA team a huge thanks for several reasons. That Jeffrey still encouraged me to submit something after all my years of never getting around to it is pretty darned nice of him. Erin Kissane and the ALA team worked ’til last minute to add some, ahem, spit and polish to the article.
I must mention the awesome illustration from Kevin Cornell. I’d followed Kevin’s work in ALA but just recently began to explore his blog, bearskinrug, which readers had mentioned here on my blog just last week. It hadn’t been on my radar ’til now, and holy smokies, folkies, this is one worth checking out.
And of course, fantastically talented designer Jason Santa Maria gets a big hug and a promise of a night of free drinks from me at SXSW in March. He spent a lot of time working with me to choose the imagery and design the figures, and it was fun to get to know him better and collaborate a bit in the process. Look for his terrific box model visual in the article. Originally, Jon Hicks had graciously given us the green light to use his fabulous 3d box model in the article, but Jason got started playing with the idea. So now, we’ve got another great box model diagram floating around.
Okay, bad pun, so I’ll leave you with this: I hope you enjoy the article as much as I enjoyed writing it and working with everyone at ALA.
Filed under: professional, standards, web design and development
Posted by: Molly | 06:48 | Comments (17)
Good article on grids! It was worth the wait
As for Kevin Cornell, yeah, BSR is beautiful, as are his illustrations.
Also, thanks for the insight into the ALA collaborative process. I’m always interested in how things tick.
I really enjoyed the article and will try to incorporate some more “free design” into my own work.
One questions I have is how do you see your gridless design working for web applications as opposed to a mostly read only site? Since I spend most of my time building interactive web applications, I always find it difficult to move away from a table-based design for my forms.
Sean—
Fantastic article Molly. You’ve really touched on something with grids and wayfinding, particularly in cities.
When I go to your fine country I’m often baffled when trying to find my way around. I’ve never really understood how to navigate around a grid based city (I know, I know – it’s easy right? Not for me). Your article got me thinking why.
I think it might have something to with us Brits, and our unplanned cities, and our reliance on wayfinding systems (good or bad) to find our way around rather than orientation to the grid.
Either that, or I’ve got a terrible sense of direction.
Anyway, great article as always.
Amen for the BearSkinRug! I think I’ll point out the excellent individual who happened to bring up BSR to you
.
Fantastic website, isn’t it? Just love the stuff.
It’s a great article and I’ve been sitting here thinking over it (while doing other things, of course) for about an hour or so, and I think I’ve come to some type of rough conclusion.
I’d like to think that our affinity for and magnetism toward the grid isn’t only due to the previous use of table-based layout, but also because of the way the screen itself is: our windows, control structures, and common UI elements have almost always been based on rectangular structures, and, similarly, our screens are actually a very, very minute grid of pixels in themselves. I’d like to say that the traditional grid goes deeper than just table-based HTML. (That doesn’t even touch on the grid in print design- that’s a separate issue altogether.)
It’s also kind of amusing that you brought this point up in the same year that Boulton (whom you referenced) and Vinh are promoting an even more strict interpretation of the grid. Do you just want to see rich experimentation with CSS?
And, finally, since I’m already taking up too much screen real estate with this rambling, have you read Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability? He wrote an article on ALA a while back, but his book spends a chapter talking about the history of human wayfinding through labyrinthine structures. He emphasizes how we actually do find our way into, out of, and throughout buildings, the world, and the web, and I found that chapter pretty fascinating as well as a parallel to your metaphor on planned-vs.-unplanned cities.
(Also, removed all of my hyperlinks this time in case for some reason that’s why your comment form is redirecting me to the FBI as some sort of spam joke. Odd.)
Great article, Molly.
I know a few designers who feel it’s good design to have web elements line up to a grid. Combine that with the fact that CSS still lends itself to drawing boxes and it’s probably not surprising people tend to create boxy designs.
Naturally once we get support for rounded corners BANG! the web will be full of Macintosh-eque “everything round” design
I should probably be sleeping but im finishing up on some blog reading and writing. The amazing Molly E. Holzschlag has a really great article, Thinking Outside the Grid [...]
Oh yes, beautiful.
Based on some of the comments at ALA, this sounds like the beginning of another religious design argument, along the lines of “It’s my way or the highway!” Some people need larger and more frequent doses of “It Depends.”
Molly is not telling everyone to throw out their grids and go freestyle. She is saying, “Maybe your content and its visual design metaphor are appropriate for the exploration of an organic, non-grid-based layout.” I think our overall experience with visual communication design tells us “probably not,” but CSS makes it easier to both explore and execute less-structured layout options.
Thanks for using my site as an example of grid-based design. I’m honored.
Ryan , Your website is the must appropriate example out there !
Regards my friend
Was worth the wait I like reading outside the box every now and then!
That Is a really usefull article… Thanks
Very interesting and useful, great use of examples.
Thanks a lot.
verry interesting, thank you
thanks for your sharing
thankk you