№ 38. Grids and creativity

The problem with grids, it was said, is that they limit the designer’s creativity. Maybe it’s because the grids are made out of boxes and one must inevitably think inside of them. Or maybe it’s because creative people really hate limitations (poets, for instance, after struggling with meter and rhyme for centuries ended by inventing the free verse). In this text I intend to provide an answer to the issue involving the two elements noted in the title; it won’t be a radical position; it will rather be a personal statement.
First of all, I confess I love grids. I use them a lot in my designs; they give my clients the liberty of moving around elements or easily creating ad spaces; they allow me to play around with typographic elements and to individually style every single post (I’ll give all the details in my next post, so stay tuned); finally, they make very easy the creation of special layouts (e.g. magazine style themes).

On the other hand, grids work best with fixed widths. I occasionally created fluid grids, using ems and percents, but only for websites that weren’t going to sell ad spaces. (Well, this is a rather an issue affecting the entire web design field, an not only the aspect of using grids. I guess it’s about deciding if it’s worth dumping the user’s control on the way that a website is displayed for the advertisements income.)
Using grids is definitely a personal decision. They don’t do special things; they only make them easy. They might be constraining. But I think the constrains are similar to those faced by copywriters and art directors. Using grids is just like being in the advertising industry. One only has to be creative and effective.

Tags: css, Design, grids

Published on the 5th of February, 2009, in Design · Print