Dig the new breed
Old fashioned causes like that still stand
Gotta rid this prejudice that ties you down
(Ghosts by The Jam)
Design a web page.
Draw a rectangle.
Design a web page that looks great on an iPad.
Draw a smaller rectangle.
Design a web page that looks and works great on an iPhone.
Draw a rectangle that’s smaller still.
That’s how we’ve designed during the transition from desktop only to many devices web. With a series of fixed canvas designs, each painstakingly pre-crafted, usually in Photoshop. This isn’t how we’ll design in one, two, five year’s time.
Embrace the fluidity of the web. Design layouts and systems that can cope to whatever environment they may find themselves in. But the only way we can do any of this is to shed ways of thinking that have been shackles around our necks. They’re holding us back.
What we’ve come to know as responsive design (using Media Queries, fluid grids and flexible images) is a step in the right direction, but no-one you’ve seen, read or heard talk about responsive design knows what a more flexible, device-agnostic approach to designing for the web is truly like.
That’s because the truly responsive design web designer doesn’t exist (yet), and won’t until there is a generation of designers for whom there are no distinctions between a desktop, mobile and otherwise web.
I, for one, will dig this new breed.