Design Blog - Streamline Your Web Development Workflow with the 960 Grid System

Web Design Blog

Thoughts and commentary about web design plus links to helpful resources including fonts, plugins, templates, stock photos, software, scripts, tutorials, and other useful tools for webmasters!

Friday, February 13, 2009

Streamline Your Web Development Workflow with the 960 Grid System

The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem. The 12 column grid is divided into portions that are 60 pixels wide. The 16 column grid consists of 40 pixel increments. Each column has 10 pixels of margin on the left and right, which create 20 pixel wide gutters between columns.

Purpose
The premise of the system is ideally suited to rapid prototyping, but it would work equally well when integrated into a production environment. There are printable sketch sheets, design layouts, and a CSS file that have identical measurements.

Nine-Sixty
All modern monitors support at least 1024 × 768 pixel resolution. 960 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 32, 40, 48, 60, 64, 80, 96, 120, 160, 192, 240, 320 and 480. This makes it a highly flexible base number to work with.

Learn more at http://960.gs/