Bringing my reading back into the world of web design is Khoi Vinh’s book Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design, which with Khoi’s grid-based layout and ample whitespace on each page I spent an unexpectedly short single day reading!
The slim book contains a mixture of information that is new to me and things I’ve seen before, but since I’m no grid master I have to right to say that I’m familiar with anything in the book. I appreciated the reminder that I should figure out what I want a website to do before I start writing code and the peek into Khoi’s design process was enlightening.
The book contains a brief history of grids then focuses on creating a grid and the obstacles that need to be overcome to do so. It is not a technical book that delves into the code required to make grids come to life on the world wide web. Once I realized this I appreciated the way it was written as a springboard to allow me to seek out more information on my own.
I think that I was in exactly the right place for Ordering Disorder to help me. I have read a bit about grids in the past, and have tried to use them in my projects with limited success, but reading Ordering Disorder improved my knowledge of grid principles to a level where I feel they can be much more useful when designing a website, even if I don’t take advantage of the springboard effect to launch my grid knowledge into the stratosphere and beyond.
