On web design, grids, and awesome people.

In a haze of clicking around, I stumbled across Khoi Vinh’s web site, and his post on a talk given recently at SXSW in Texas. The focus of the talk was the use of grids in visual design. I started reading it without realizing that Khoi’s the guy responsible for this recent redesign. That just made me read closer.

His post (which was so good I’m linking to it twice) talks about a theoretical redesign of yahoo.com using grids, and he includes the slides from his SXSW presentation on the topic. A lot of what he talks about is working within certain constraints, such as an average display resolution, and the various ad units which have to be taken into consideration in the design. He says the following:

Ad units complicate things, but they’re actually very helpful because they serve as fixed constraints.

Constraints are the mother of design invention.

How awesome is that?! His slides were awe-inspiring, and have already taken root in my brain. I love when stuff does that.