This week I’m taking a deep dive into how I approach projects, using a recent design for Zombie Hunt as an example. Yesterday, I wrote about designing dark and light themes.. Today is all about the choices I make when designing a layout grid.

This week I’m diving deep into how I approach projects, using a recent design for Zombie Hunt as an example. Yesterday, I wrote about making decisions about colour. Today is all about using colour across dark and light themes.

Two weeks ago, I took a week—away from work on Nozomi Networks—and spent some time working on a redesign for Zombie Hunt. The team are franchising their successful business and needed a new design to attract customers and potential franchisees.

I’m starting my fourth full year working mainly with Nozomi Networks. I love the people there, the work we’re doing is fascinating, and I enjoy the ability to develop designs over a longer period of time. But, I will have some time available for other projects and I want to use that time to make a difference.

Here’s a quick design tip for making headlines more interesting using text-decoration.

Here’s a quick design tip for improving the readability and style of long passages of running text.

Justin Stahl tweeted, “It’s been tough to recruit product designers with great visual design and an eye for detail. Did we atomic-design-system and product-manager-skills a generation out of having them?” It’s a fair question.

I’m not a framework user. I’ve never once used Bootstrap and I didn’t use 960gs or Blueprint before that. I can understand the benefits of using a framework or off-the-shelf templates, but they weren’t ever for me. Still, I wanted a simple set of layout modules I could call on for design projects, so I developed my own. I call them Layout Love.

As I’ve said plenty of times before, a well-chosen grid can do much, much more than align content. Our choice of grid can influence how we approach a design and it can change how we think about layout. That’s especially true of modular grids.

Compound grids offer exciting and often unconventional layout possibilities. Most importantly, they also encourage us to think differently about the choices we make when we’re designing layouts. If you’re familiar with the grid made ubiquitous by Bootstrap, a 3+4 compound grid is a great place to start learning about compound grids.

Although I don’t get to do it as often as I’d like, I enjoy working with startups. So, I was thrilled to be asked to work on a website design for Worrysome, a new business which aims to take the worry out of worrying.

A generation of product and website designers has grown up with 12 or 16 column grids from Bootstrap-style frameworks. In those frameworks, columns are used mostly for aligning content. In my new design for Stuff & Nonsense, I wanted to go beyond that and use a compound grid to influence the entire design.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 40 and my design this week was again inspired by David King.

David King was a British writer, designer and historian of graphic design. He devoted his career to uncovering and chronicling the art of the Soviet and the Constructivist periods, developing posters and graphics for many political groups.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 39 and my design this week was inspired by Milton Glaser.

Milton Glaser was born in 1929 in The Bronx, New York City and throughout his career, he personally designed and illustrated more than 400 posters including a famous psychedelic poster of Bob Dylan.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 38 and my design this week was again inspired by Saul Bass.

In a career which spanned over 40 years, Saul Bass not only designed some of America’s most iconic logos, but also designed title sequences and film posters for some of Hollywood’s best filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese. For Hitchcock, Bass created innovative title sequences for films including North by Northwest, Psycho, and Vertigo. The opening sequence of Mad Men—one of my favourite TV shows—pays homage to Bass who died in 1996 aged 75.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 37 and my design this week was again inspired by Paula Scher.

Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter and educator and the first female principal at design firm Pentagram. She is well-known for her distinctive typographic style.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 36 and my design this week was inspired by David King.

David King was a British writer, designer and historian of graphic design. He devoted his career to uncovering and chronicling the art of the Soviet and the Constructivist periods, developing posters and graphics for many political groups.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 34 and my design this week was again inspired by Max Bill.

Born in 1908, Max Bill was a Swiss artist, typeface and graphic designer, and industrial designer. He studied at the Bauhaus under Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 35 and my design this week was inspired by Paula Scher.

Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter and educator and the first female principal at design firm Pentagram. She is well-known for her distinctive typographic style.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 33 and my design this week was inspired by Tibor Kalman.

Tibor Kalman was a Hungarian American graphic designer best-known for his work as editor-in-chief of Colors magazine. In 1979, Kalman opened his own studio with the goal of challenging mundane design thinking and creating unpredictable work.

Since going on holiday during July, I’ve fallen behind with my commitment to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. Now II’m back in the studio and II’ve settled back into work, II’m making up for lost time. Here are six new designs, inspired by Otl Aicher,Saul Bass, Ken Garland, and Armin Hofmann.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 26 and my design this week was inspired by Lester Beall.

Lester Beall was an American modernist graphic designer. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Beall moved to Chicago to study and from there to New York. From his farm in Connecticut, he worked on covers and posters which often featured his distinctive use of photomontage.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 25 and my design this week was inspired by Erik Nitsche.

Erik Nitsche was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1908 and was a pioneer in the design of books, reports, and other printed materials. In 1955, Nitsche began working as art director at engineering company General Dynamics where he designed a 420-page book on the company’s history entitled Dynamic America.

Throughout 2020, I’ve committed to designing 52 designs for a series of Inspired Design Decisions. This is week 24 and my design this week was inspired by Dan Friedman.

Friedman was an American graphic and furniture designer. He studied under Armin Hofmann at the Ulm School of Design and became a major contributor to the new wave typography movement. While working at Pentagram until 1984, Friedman designed letterheads, logos, and posters. Sadly, Friedman died of AIDS in 1995 in New York.