1. Not all grids used in grid design are symmetrical, what a dumbshit thing to suggest otherwise.

2. Grid design is an established discipline, its not simply aligning things on a basic modular grid. Go read Josef Muller Brockmann’s ‘Grid Systems in Graphic Design’ and then try to convince yourself that grid design is as simplistic as you made it out to be in this article. In fact, after reading that book i think you would find grid systems are integral in improving usability and ensuring there is sufficient contrast between your design elements to give readers/visitors visual clues as to the hierarchy of the design elements in a page.

3. In the first images of this article you have a grid comprised of vertical colums with the accompanying text ‘this is not a grid’, then in the following paragraph you state ’so called grids are nothing but symmetric vertical columns’ WTF man, do you read your own articles before you publish them?

Unfortunately, the diehard designers will state that a grid always can be found. Which is of course true because of mathematics, but lets all try to think outside the standard grid and less about ratios and patterns….web designers need to focus more on the story of the website from time to time..the user experience can be lead and driven by contrast, color, shade, etc….not just by boxes….

That said, I think grid design definitely does refer to alignment, as you mentioned, Kyle, but different domains do occasionally warp certain words to use them to describe common patterns in those domains, and I think `grid’ is one of those words whose definition has been modified slightly within the domain of layout to express some common alignment techniques.