For many years, designers have built layouts of different types; they may be as simple as a calling card site, right through to a theme for a content management system, such as WordPress or Joomla. The meteoric rise of accessing the Internet through different devices means that we can no longer create layouts that are tied to specific devices or sizes—we must be flexible!
To achieve this flexibility requires us to embrace a number of changes in our design process—the first being the type of layout we should create. A key part of this is the use of percentage values to define our layouts; rather than create something from the ground up, we can make use of a predefined grid system that has been tried and tested, as a basis for future designs.
The irony is that there are lots of grid systems vying for our attention, so without further ado, let's make a start by exploring the different types of layouts, and how they compare to responsive designs.