Grid Based Design
At work, I'm starting on a massive website redesign project that is already well on its way. While I have a lot of experience working with HTML and CSS to develop the structure and visual styles of a website, this project is using software and techniques that are pretty much entirely new to me.
One of these techniques is a way of approaching layout design using a grid based design structure. The idea behind it is that it provides a very well-balanced visual structure and its supposed to give developers a more thought-out and consistent layout. It's supposed to be better for quick prototyping, but for me at least, it is far from intuitive. Right now, it slows me down because I haven't gotten used to it. I'm excited to be working on this though because I do believe it'll be a very useful skill to develop and one that I would probably never have bothered to take the time to learn on my own account. With so much to learn in this field, I rarely go back to the things I think I already know and try to find a new way of doing them.
I've only taken a cursory look at our current design, but I've been reading a bit about grid designs this weekend and I'm excited to get back to work to find out a thing or two about the current design I'll be working on. I think I'd like to pick the brain of our designer a bit and see if he'll walk me through his design process and choices. There are tons of online articles and resources on grid based design and I'm too new to it to write about it intelligently, but if anyone is interested in getting started, Smashing Magazine put together a great overview and I've particularly been impressed with Mark Boulton's "Five Simple steps to Designing Grid Systems".