How to make your designs responsive

A website page next to how it looks on a mobile device

Back in the ‘olden days’ (before 2010), most web design involved the creation of two separate websites: one for desktop, one for mobile. Then Apple introduced the iPad, and everything changed. Before long, the number of different devices hitting the market was increasing exponentially, and it was becoming impossible to design a bespoke website for every single one. To meet this challenge, a new discipline emerged, which its creator Ethan Marcotte dubbed responsive web design (or RWD for short).

The basic principle of responsive web design is that, rather than create a separate website for every device, you write one lot of code that will seamlessly adapt your site to whichever device it’s being consumed on.

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Tom May

Tom May is an award-winning journalist and editor specialising in design, photography and technology. Author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. Today, he is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq and its sister sites Digital Camera World, T3.com and Tech Radar. He also writes for Creative Boom and works on content marketing projects.