If you are of a certain age, you’ll know the struggle of the early days with table layouts and awful browsers. However things were a bit easier as there was no responsive and certainly no debates about CSS in JS. Ah great days.

I started out as a web designer and my focus was very much about making things look nice on the web. After a few years of trying, I finally got a big break and became a designer for a decent company who worked with the London Marathon. It was here I learnt CSS and HTML and for that I am hugely grateful for the help I got there. I got to work with so many clients and was given mostly free reign to design what I wanted albeit as a fixed width of 768px and later on 1024px. There was no mobile to contend with so what you saw was what everyone saw.

I found as the more I went on learning CSS and HTML, the more daring I was able to be and it was very exciting. I loved that part of it.

I still do but we have so much more to contend with these days. Mobile, tablet, tvs. We need to optimise the site and so much more. It’s still fun but it doesn’t feel like a playground anymore.

Anyway, I recently found a load of designs I did for clients back in the day and wondered what it would have been like working with responsive at that time plus what I know about CSS and HTML now so I decided to rebuild what I did back then as I felt some of the stuff I did hadn’t aged that badly and with a bit of modern approach could pass off as a decent website.

Apologies up front, the original designs are pretty small so you might struggle for great detail but thems the breaks. I might have them on a second HDD somewhere.

Remember, this was a bit of fun so be nice. It was nice to revisit what I did and that was the sole purpose. Be nice if others did the same. The new sites are based on a fake charity rather than the original content.

Site One

This was a mini site for Empower as part of the Marathon campaign. The rebuild is here.

Site Two

This was a landing page for RedR UK as part of the Marathon campaign. The rebuild is here

Site Three

This was a microsite for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. The rebuild is here