Way back in history, especially during the Renaissance, the great masters of art harped on the importance of proportion and golden ratio, while describing a piece of art. The reason being it makes the piece of work aesthetically pleasing, and it keeps the artwork at par with the other elements in the universe. The same rule is applicable also while creating or designing a website. For any website design to be effective, it is not about the layout or the different themes used in it, but also about the balance or order that is visually prominent while viewing the website. Use of the grid, is a simple way, through which you can focus on the usability of a website and in a way you can also give a uniform look to the website.
Provides structure to the site
The use of grid for designing a website is comparatively a new trend in the arena of web designing. It provides organization and structure to the website and creates a rhythm and uniformity in the visual appearance. Generally, the readers have the habit of reading from left to right, and grid layout helps to reinforce this aspect. With the advent of portable devices like Smartphone and tablet, the volume of readers who view the websites in these devices has increased. Grid layouts help in designing stable websites, which can resize as per the device and ensures that the experience of the reader is not marred.
Keeps the proportion accurate
Grids provide a framework to the website while designing the site and it reduces the instances of visual chaos. While designating, a designer can have a clear view of the proportion that will suit your website the best. It also helps to strike a balance with the white balance and the margin of the web page. Thus, the web designer can highlight the intended content without making the webpage overcrowded. Grid layout helps in creating a clean and aesthetically pleasing websites, this being the reason for popular websites and blogs using this layout.
Gives flexibility to the site
The grid layout is beneficial for websites that are rich in content because with the use of row, columns and other architectural aspect of the site, the content can be evenly distributed and makes the site pleasing. Initially the grid layout was solely used by the print publication, but the graphic and the web designers use the same to highlight the logo of the company, advertisements and sign-in pages. It also gives flexibility to the web design. You can use the horizontal and vertical lines, make different combinations according to the website that you are about to design.
Tools for designing
To keep the alignment accurate, the designers are educated on the use of different tools of designing. Over the years, a number of resources and tutorials have evolved to aid the designers. The process of designing a website with the help of grid layout differs based on the software or the markup language that you use. Over the net, you can spot a number of tools that can help to build a website which has equal proportions. Few tools help to create websites with the help of grids of the resolution of 960 pixels. This makes the division of a page into different columns and row, easy. Again, there is a tool that helps in making accurate borders, margins and contents for different projects. You can also refer to the e-magazines that are dedicated to the use of grid layouts.
Avail CSS templates
You can also avail the CSS templates, which can be downloaded for free, and it acts as a good learning tool especially in the production environment. With practice, you can create a CSS framework easily. For HTML web pages, the grid layouts are common. The structure of the page is uniform all through. The structure comprises of a wrapper that can accommodate different columns. The wrapper should have subdivisions, which should be in equal to the volume of the column.
Rule of Thirds
According to the Rule of Thirds, the design is divided into nine parts by horizontal and vertical lines. Placing the content and different elements of designing in this intersection or in sync with these lines makes the design vibrant and arouses the interest of the viewers. It also makes designing easy if the space is broken down to blocks, and there are specific points to pace the content. Again, the basis of this rule is the divine proportion, the value of which is the mathematical constant. If you divide the structure based on this value, then you can calculate the exact position to locate the elements.
Utilize thumbnail images
Use of thumbnail images or options for social media or a buy button in a grid format provides the readers the required information in a resized and condensed format. This also does not occupy much space on the web page. You can refer to various online libraries to utilize different features of websites that are pleasant to the eye.
This article is written by Emanuel Taylor. He has shared tips for improving the visual impact of the websites. The grid layout is in vogue now and the best web designers utilize it while building a website. He has elucidated the features of this web designing.
