Inspiration

Responsive Ready

Posted on: March 7th, 2012 by Mason Brown + Comment

Responsive design is all the rage these days, and it's no surprise the term "responsive" has become an automatic score on most buzzword bingo games. It's been exciting to see responsive design practices emerge beyond a niche philosophy and become an expected barrier to entry for nearly every website moving forward. Growing volumes of people are viewing web content primarily on mobile devices and have grown to expect immersive experiences on even the smallest screens. It's widely expected to see all aspects of a website's interface adapt gracefully for a sundry of screen sizes, including buttons, text, images, video and navigation.

Fortunately, there’s a growing community of responsive design enthusiasts openly sharing various tools and techniques for others to discover and re-purpose. I certainly encourage people to create custom tailored solutions that are content-specific, but you can influence your approach by exploring many of the pre-baked tools that help solve common responsive design challenges. Here’s a collection of the responsive design guides that I find useful and inspirational.

Responsive Testing Sites

Responsive.is

Screenfly

Responsive Frameworks & Boilerplates

320 & Up

Skeleton

Fluid Baseline Grid System

Stack Layout

Responsive Grids

Gridpak

Golden Grid System

Frameless

1140 CSS Grid

Heads-Up Grid

Responsive Image, Text & Video

Adaptive Images

FitText

FitVids

Responsive Slideshows

Responsive Slides

Supersized

Responsive Examples & Inspiration:

Media Queries

Navigation Patterns

Ethan Marcotte's 20 Favorite Responsive Sites

Puzzle Matters

Posted on: November 22nd, 2011 by Mason Brown + Comment

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best advice usually comes from good listeners that know when to probe and when to preach. Good advice feels like someone handing you a puzzle piece that you've been seeking. A wise puzzle master will first acknowledge the big picture, examine the totality of pieces involved, and only attempt to connect the pieces after everything is facing up.

Recently I've pitched some ambitious business models to a few peers and I've received varying levels of support, confusion and advice. My vision is more easily demystified by sharing the success stories of companies that inspire me to create elegant solutions to complex puzzles. Below I highlight some innovative companies that not only embrace progressive business models, but also provide seamless tools for others to re-purpose and prosper.