The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development work flow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels.

The first time I checked out the 960 grid system needless to say I was sort of interested but not fully sold of the concept.

It wasn’t until I stated looking at all my designs and saw such a variety of widths in my design. It all started to look very disorderly.

I also saw that many sites that had a great looking UI had a little 960 grid logo in the footer. Hemmm I thought to my self very interesting.

I one day downloaded a Woo Theme and checked out the PSD. It was setup in the 960 grid system. Now I was interested. I downloaded the zip and started playing around with the grid.

What I like the most is how it’s kinda hard to make a design that looks bad by using it. There are built in white space gutters and so setting up a: header, nav bar, callout box, and say three buckets becomes a thing of ease and speed.

That being said, is a grid framework required for modern layout design? No, not at all; but if you spend too much time figuring out how wide to make three buckets to fill a width restriction or if you need a multi-column grid design I highly recommend you give the 960 Grid System a spin.

Well, I’ve been using 960 for about 6 months and a few UI and WP themes later, I’m sold. Now when I start out design a layout I always reach for my handy grid to lead the way.

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