At some level, design can be seen as a method of using creativity to impose tyranny on the world. Not tyranny in its classical sense, but rather tyranny on a much more modest, much more personal scale.

In the progression from problem to idea to solution, the designer may describe what she does in commercial terms (business requirements, technological limitations) or artistic terms (aesthetics, usability, human factors). Regardless, the most successful designs can be reduced to an essential intention: to create order out of disorder.

What kind of order? Why of course, the kind that reflects the designer’s view of the world as she feels it should be. Her choices can be understood as an expression of her particular ideas of the way the world should function. It’s a small, limited form of tyranny imposed on an even smaller corner of the world.

Maybe I’m projecting here. Because what I’ve just described is essentially an account of what first attracted me to design.

When it came to understanding “design” or “graphic design, ”I entered art school at seventeen with hardly an inkling. All I knew how to do was draw with a level of competence, and my only goal was to learn how to paint for a living. But I found that when I was set free to draw and paint whatever I wanted—for that matter, when I was set loose after college as an adult—the world suddenly looked like a rather chaotic place. There was no order to it, and I knew, instinctively if not consciously, that for my particular creative skills to thrive I needed to apply them to the task of creating order, at least in my work.

The grid has long been an invaluable tool for creating order out of chaos for designers of all kinds—from city planners to architects to typesetters and graphic artists. In recent years, web designers, too, have come to discover the remarkable power that grid-based design can afford in creating intuitive, immersive, and beautiful user experiences.

Ordering Disorder delivers a definitive take on grids and the Web. It provides both the big ideas and the brass-tacks techniques of grid-based design. Readers are sure to come away with a keen understanding of the power of grids, as well as the design tools needed to implement them for the World Wide Web.

Khoi Vinh is internationally recognized for bringing the tried-and-true principles of the typographic grid to the World Wide Web. He is the former Design Director for NYTimes.com, where he consolidated his reputation for superior user experience design. He writes and lectures widely on design, technology, and culture, and has published the popular blog Subtraction.com for over a decade.

More information at grids.subtraction.com