Responsive Design

The concept that launched a thousand site redesigns. For years, web designers have coveted print for its precision layouts, lamenting the varying user contexts on the web that compromise their designs. Responsive design advocates that we shift our design thinking to make a virtue of these constraints. Using fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries to embrace the ebb and flow of the web.

• Can Email Be Responsive?

  by Jason Rodriguez · Issue 395 ·May 13, 2014

  Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the popularity of HTML emails. And, like the web before it, the inbox has officially gone mobile, with over 50 percent of email opens occurring on mobile devices. Still, email design is an outrageously outdated practice. (Remember coding before web standards became… standards?) But coding an email doesn’t need to be a lesson in frustration. While email designers still have to build layouts using tables and style them with HTML attributes and—gasp!—inline styles, a number of intrepid designers are taking modern techniques pioneered for the web and applying them to the archaic practice of email design. Jason Rodriguez shows how to apply the principles of responsive web design to the frustrating but essential realm of email design.

• Look at the Big Picture

  by Lyza Danger Gardner ·May 08, 2014

  It’s easy to see that automation can streamline image-optimization for all the varied contexts on the pan-device web. What’s harder to imagine is a future where foregrounding meaningful content in images can be handled by an algorithm. Art direction still requires human intervention, and that’s often a luxury in high-production environments.

• Content-out Layout

  by Nathan Ford · Issue 392 ·March 25, 2014

  Grids serve well to divide up a predefined canvas and guide how content fits onto a page, but when designing for the web’s fluid nature, we need something more responsive. Enter ratios, which architects, sculptors, and book designers have all used in their work to help set the tone for their compositions, and to scale their material from sketch to final build. Designers can apply a similar process on the web by focusing on the tone and shape of our content first, then working outward to design fluid, ratio-based grid systems that invite harmony between content, layout, and screen. Nathan Ford takes the next step toward more sophisticated, content-focused layouts on the web.

Understanding your Technology Goals & Abilities

We recently had a client contact us who was in dire straits. She had a small family shop and knew she needed to expand her internet presence but was not sure where to begin. After helping her to identify the core areas she wanted to grow we were able to help her formulate a marketing and social media deployment solution.

Originally she requested two websites, two Facebook accounts, 9 Twitter accounts, 10 blogs as well as 10 Google profiles. Her believe was that each area of her store should have its own unique identity on the internet. Taking a step back and looking at things though the client’s viewpoint it was easy to see what she was thinking. She told us “I can look just as big as Macy’s or JC Penny on the Internet if do all this”. In fact, yes she was correct. The Internet more or less is an even playing field where a smaller company can compete with a much larger one. However, it is important to understand your physical and financial resources when planning out your strategy.

We explained to our client that the ambitious goals she was setting would require a large amount of her time to keep each area properly marketed and updated and that we feared she would soon feel overwhelmed. Our team explained to her that not keeping all of these media outlets updated would in the long run be much worse than not having them at all. In the end we settled on a scaled back solution which is much easier for her and her staff to manage without feeling overwhelmed.

1. Know your budget and available resources.


2. Prioritize your goals and identify your desired outcome.


3. No matter how good you believe your plan is, it is always a good idea to work with an agency to get a second opinion and ask questions about items you are not sure of.

Sean O'Connor
Director of Technology Services

Time to invest back into your business

As the economy improves now is a perfect time to invest into your company. Over the last few years most businesses have had to really watch the bottom line and pull back on expenditures. Unfortunately for most small businesses, marketing and technology services were the first to be put on hold.

Today, with the U.S. economy improving there has never been a better time to invest back into your business. The team at Guildernet can help, whether you need a new website, some new marketing campaigns or maybe even need to completely rebrand your business to reflect a change in strategic direction.

Give us a call anytime at (518) 250-9258 or visit our website http://www.guildernet.com