Responsive design meets Piet Mondrian: grids ensure order and harmony in the design. But they can also be used dynamically. The interaction of colored areas, text boxes, and white space, placed evenly or irregularly, creates tension. Text boxes outlined in black refer to the black lines in Mondrian's surface compositions. Filled with text, they create short reading sections that can be consumed quickly. The texts are reduced to essential statements or important quotations. This makes them quick to grasp and does justice to the shorter attention span on the web. The layout is flexible: when the browser window is enlarged or reduced, the areas and text boxes are constantly rearranged. The design not only uses the primary colors yellow, red, and blue, but also exclusively rectangular areas. The entire design is based on abstraction and simplicity: clear shapes, colors, and large lettering. A certain amount of chance creates a little chaos: the flexible design cannot be completely controlled.

In the print publication, it becomes clear that the responsive design cannot simply be transferred to the printed pages. The bordered text boxes give way to narrower columns, which are also arranged in a flexible grid. Different font sizes and text arrangements emphasize the flexible design concept—even in static print.

“It is safe to say that no form within the whole of modern aesthetic production has sustained itself so relentlessly while at the same time being so impervious to change. It is not just the sheer number of careers that have been devoted to the exploration of the grid that is impressive, but the fact that exploration could never have chosen less fertile ground. As the experience of Mondrian amply demonstrates, development is precisely what the grid resists. It is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature.”¹