the designer is Ethan Marcotte, he's written a book about fluid (or as he calls it, "responsive") web design.
http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design
one member of the backend dev team was posting in /r/web_design over on reddit. if you're really interested, it couldn't hurt to post a reply and ask him about things.
http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/kd2e9/boston_glo...