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What's wrong with grids? Everything I have read about design seems to advocate laying things out in the fashion. The nice thing about bootstrap is it enables t

by jiggy2011 14y ago

What's wrong with grids? Everything I have read about design seems to advocate laying things out in the fashion. The nice thing about bootstrap is it enables things like having say, 2 columns at the top of the page then 3 columns underneath then finally going to a single column for the footer very easily. Doing these things in manual CSS if you don't know about all the various browser quirks and tricks can be a pain.

papsosouid 14y ago
Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. They are a cludge to make it easier to lay things out the way you want, but do so by tightly coupling content and presentation. I see it advocated too, but not by design gurus, by people who want to just have it work and don't care about doing things correctly or having reusable, modular components.
- fatbird 14y ago
  Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. From a software perspective, perhaps. From an aesthetic design perspective, grids are a common tool used widely outside of web based design. by tightly coupling content and presentation. CSS has always been a hack that disallows completely or properly separating content and presentation, except in toy cases. Thus, frameworks like Bootstrap.
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    >From an aesthetic design perspective, grids are a common tool used widely outside of web based design. Yes, we're not in 1996 anymore. We're beyond the "lets pretend the web is print" phase finally. That means separation of content and presentation matters. >CSS has always been a hack that disallows completely or properly separating content and presentation What? People (deliberately?) not understanding how to use CSS correctly certainly caused problems like that. And I'm certainly open to blaming much of that on the design of CSS. But it by no means disallowed it separating content and presentation, that is the entire point of it. Stop littering your markup with classes and you can get the benefits of that separation.
- egonschiele 14y ago
  > Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. As a former designer, I cannot overstress how stupid this sounds. It's the equivalent of a designer walking up to a bunch of programmers and saying "what's the big deal with functions?" Some things are opinion, and some things are just wrong. This is the latter. Here's the longer response: Grids are fundamental to good design. Have you ever wondered why some sites just look right? GRIDS. Ever noticed how many people try to emulate famous designs but never seem to get it quite right? What are they missing? GRIDS. If you start designing without a grid, guess what? You've already resigned yourself to mediocrity, even if you don't realize it. Here's an analogy: you are building a house, and you decide to "just wing it" with the foundation and fix it as required as you go along. You have already failed before you even started. The grid is the design equivalent of a home's foundation. Everything you design will build on top of that grid. When you say things like > I see it advocated too, but not by design gurus there's really no coherent response you will get except NO. STUPID STUPID STUPID. Edit: Here's what one of my designer friends responded with: "And it's always good to write a line of code (at least) twice, in case it isn't noticed the first time." And no, I won't show you an example of a guru who advocates grids. Stay ignorant.
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    Show me a respected design authority who advocates grids then. "STUPID STUPID STUPID" is not an argument. The fact is, grids tie content to presentation, and are entirely unnecessary. The fact that you think grids is the reason some websites look right and others look wrong is astoundingly ignorant.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Here you go: http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestaltung/dp/3721201450 http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestal...
      - egonschiele 14y ago
        > Purchasing my copy of grid Systems in Graphic Design, by Josef Muller-Brockmann, was the best money I've ever spent on a design text. I was a relatively seasoned designer with 6 years of pro-experience when I was fortunate enough to find a copy of this masterpiece. I was largely self-taught however, and while I knew from working in various layout programs about grids, I had no idea how powerfully they could be utilized. Within a weekend of reading and absorbing this book, my designs had improved substantially. Sounds about right!
specialist 14y ago
Grids are awesome. So awesome in fact, that I created DesignGridLayout, a Java Swing layout manager. Jean Francois Poilpret has been the project owner for years and extended far beyond my original vision. http://designgridlayout.java.net http://designgridlayout.java.net It has a mostly "fluent API", so you just add components and it mostly figures out columns and spanning widths.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  I didn't say grids were bad in general, I said they are bad in web design. The problem of tightly coupling content and presentation, and the hiding semantic meaning that goes with it, doesn't exist in a desktop GUI environment, or in a print ad or flyer, etc. Grids are perfectly fine in those uses.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I don't understand how you are mixing content with presentation by using a grid any more than any other method of design? With bootstrap you mostly use CSS classes to dictate presentation so you can keep your HTML pretty clean. If I wanted to make a website with perfect separation of content and presentation, how would I go about it?

papsosouid 14y ago

Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. They are a cludge to make it easier to lay things out the way you want, but do so by tightly coupling content and presentation. I see it advocated too, but not by design gurus, by people who want to just have it work and don't care about doing things correctly or having reusable, modular components.

fatbird 14y ago
Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. From a software perspective, perhaps. From an aesthetic design perspective, grids are a common tool used widely outside of web based design. by tightly coupling content and presentation. CSS has always been a hack that disallows completely or properly separating content and presentation, except in toy cases. Thus, frameworks like Bootstrap.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  >From an aesthetic design perspective, grids are a common tool used widely outside of web based design. Yes, we're not in 1996 anymore. We're beyond the "lets pretend the web is print" phase finally. That means separation of content and presentation matters. >CSS has always been a hack that disallows completely or properly separating content and presentation What? People (deliberately?) not understanding how to use CSS correctly certainly caused problems like that. And I'm certainly open to blaming much of that on the design of CSS. But it by no means disallowed it separating content and presentation, that is the entire point of it. Stop littering your markup with classes and you can get the benefits of that separation.
egonschiele 14y ago
> Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. As a former designer, I cannot overstress how stupid this sounds. It's the equivalent of a designer walking up to a bunch of programmers and saying "what's the big deal with functions?" Some things are opinion, and some things are just wrong. This is the latter. Here's the longer response: Grids are fundamental to good design. Have you ever wondered why some sites just look right? GRIDS. Ever noticed how many people try to emulate famous designs but never seem to get it quite right? What are they missing? GRIDS. If you start designing without a grid, guess what? You've already resigned yourself to mediocrity, even if you don't realize it. Here's an analogy: you are building a house, and you decide to "just wing it" with the foundation and fix it as required as you go along. You have already failed before you even started. The grid is the design equivalent of a home's foundation. Everything you design will build on top of that grid. When you say things like > I see it advocated too, but not by design gurus there's really no coherent response you will get except NO. STUPID STUPID STUPID. Edit: Here's what one of my designer friends responded with: "And it's always good to write a line of code (at least) twice, in case it isn't noticed the first time." And no, I won't show you an example of a guru who advocates grids. Stay ignorant.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  Show me a respected design authority who advocates grids then. "STUPID STUPID STUPID" is not an argument. The fact is, grids tie content to presentation, and are entirely unnecessary. The fact that you think grids is the reason some websites look right and others look wrong is astoundingly ignorant.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Here you go: http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestaltung/dp/3721201450 http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestal...
    - egonschiele 14y ago
      > Purchasing my copy of grid Systems in Graphic Design, by Josef Muller-Brockmann, was the best money I've ever spent on a design text. I was a relatively seasoned designer with 6 years of pro-experience when I was fortunate enough to find a copy of this masterpiece. I was largely self-taught however, and while I knew from working in various layout programs about grids, I had no idea how powerfully they could be utilized. Within a weekend of reading and absorbing this book, my designs had improved substantially. Sounds about right!

specialist 14y ago

Grids are awesome. So awesome in fact, that I created DesignGridLayout, a Java Swing layout manager. Jean Francois Poilpret has been the project owner for years and extended far beyond my original vision. http://designgridlayout.java.net http://designgridlayout.java.net It has a mostly "fluent API", so you just add components and it mostly figures out columns and spanning widths.

papsosouid 14y ago
I didn't say grids were bad in general, I said they are bad in web design. The problem of tightly coupling content and presentation, and the hiding semantic meaning that goes with it, doesn't exist in a desktop GUI environment, or in a print ad or flyer, etc. Grids are perfectly fine in those uses.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I don't understand how you are mixing content with presentation by using a grid any more than any other method of design? With bootstrap you mostly use CSS classes to dictate presentation so you can keep your HTML pretty clean. If I wanted to make a website with perfect separation of content and presentation, how would I go about it?