Smashing Magazine: Grid-Based Design

Smashing Magazine has recently released an interesting post on grid-based design.

Grid-Based Design: Six Creative Column Techniques.

Grid systems bring visual structure and balance to site design. As a tool grids are useful for organizing and presenting information. Used properly, they can enhance the user experience by creating predictable patterns for users to follow. From designer’s point of view they allow for an organized methodology for planning systematic layouts.

The post talks in-depth about grid design, and has plenty of screenshots to illustrate their points.

I haven’t looked closely at the whole grid-based design concept before, but it’s definitely on my to-do list. It looks like a good way to design certain types of sites (e.g. content-heavy ones), and I need to read more about it.