Ordering Disorder

Ordering Disorder undertakes the tough task of exploring how to apply the typographic grid, an established tool from print design, to web design.

Khoi suggests that fundamentally design is creating order from chaos, and that the grid is our most fundamental tool to achieve such order. The book mostly focuses on application: the reader follows Khoi as he designs using a grid. I love that this format allows you to vicariously encounter the design challenges and learn the why of Khoi’s decisions.

Unfortunately I felt the book (© 2011) to be too out-of-date by the time I read it (2021) to be of much practical use. Written on the cusp of RWD, it assumes fixed pixel constraints we can no longer rely on and only briefly mentions mobile and fluid layouts. So much has changed in 10 years (Flexbox, CSS Grid) that I wish there was a 2nd edition: “Grid Principles for Fluid Web Design”!