Though perhaps we should question the increasing (IME) emphasis on grid systems in web design. Sure, using grids is easy, and we shouldn't be different just to be different, but who says there is no more effective way to present a site than a load of rectangles with a bit of space between them? A lot of the Web is becoming rather cliched in this respect, just like frames and table layouts before.
Good point. To me, the emphasis on grid systems is mostly to improve designs made by people not necessarily talented in design. In that it's something one might not know about even though it improves a design without doing much.
Moving completely away from grid systems to have something different probably needs more talent in the design department and can not be achieved by anybody.
Grid systems are a staple of tool in print graphic design, but only seem to have been picked up by the web design community in the last year or so.
It seems there is a lot of misunderstanding, grid systems are an invisible structure for laying out content with some consistency. Every newspaper, magazine, book or poster you see is usually designed to a grid of some description.
What we're seeing at the moment is a lot of web design taking the idea of the grid very literally, applying it in a very self conscious way, treating the grid as an aesthetic afterthought rather than as a functional underlying system.
I think it's part of an evolution. Some web-designers are discovering the (long established in traditional printing) grid systems but not all of them really know how to use it or really what to do with it, besides the fact that it's a tool that they should probably use. They end up using it more prominently than they should because it's new to them.
To me, it feels like it's the result of learning the domain backwards, where you have a finished product and then learn about how it's usually done, so you correct here and there some aspects. And it shows.
To be honest, I'm saying that without knowing either how to properly use grids. As many others, I have seen many descriptions of it and how, for some designers, it's the ultimate thing and for others, a tool that they don't want to stick to (e.g. as presented in the documentary Helvetica.)
In the end, do you feel that it's better or worse that people with no "proper" design background apply the grid systems "too much" rather than not paying attention to it at all? I believe that it's good that that kind of knowledge gets spread out, even it misused at first.
Maybe adding the golden ratio would be a plus... I am not that great at web design either, but I hope reading articles like this and practicing bits of the recommendations will be like working at keeping a smile on my face - It lifts my mood.
