After browsing through all the flashing lights and shiny colors in Dribbble, casual admirers might come to the conclusion that web design is a unique bespoke process. But looking closer you can see some motifs with two columns here, or a grid layout there. When it comes down to layouts, it makes sense to at least have a solid foundation as a starting point rather than coding all the layout and responsiveness yourself.
That’s the concept behind Froont, the Riga-based team with a responsive design tool and now building a community behind it.
“What Github did to code, we want to open web design. We believe good design comes from working together, and the difference in design is made by the content. The layout, font sizes aren’t what distinguishes design, but if you can reuse those you can come to better results faster,” says Anna Andersone, co-founder of Froont.
It makes sense because web design is already somewhat open source – if you see a website you can also dig in to the code behind it. Before this was called “getting inspired,” but Froont hopes to build a more open-source community to responsive web design. Pages built on Froont can be shared and cloned (or twinned, as they call it) to build off on your own, and then share with a client or fellow designers. Like Github, Froont allows you to share designs for free, but if you want any privacy it comes at a premium
Getting back to their editor, their platform allows users (even without any HTML/CSS skills) to edit a design or build one from scratch and play around with the responsiveness. So far they’ve seen good traction with 100,000 pages built using the tool.
Going forward, Froont is looking to build their next round, and will be reachable at Slush, TechCrunch Disrupt, and Brooklyn Beta.
