Ethan Marcotte
Ethan Marcotte — Designer and writer, Boston
Responsive web design (coined the term), accessibility, web standards.
ethanmarcotte.comArtificial intelligence is a failed technology. It's time we described it that way.
The person who coined "responsive web design" and changed how the entire industry builds websites. These days, Ethan writes with the same precision about labor, justice, and the human cost of technology hype. His essays are sharp, deeply sourced, and unafraid to call things what they are.
Written by Ethan Marcotte since 2003.
Occasional
Publishes a few times per month
19
Independent Blog
English
How this blog's content is accessed through Blogs Are Back.
Full Content
RSS feed includes complete post content for reading in-app
Proxy Required
Feed is fetched through our proxy for browser compatibility
Proxy Post Links
Post pages are loaded through our proxy for compatibility
No Embedding
Posts open in a new tab — the blog restricts inline display
This blog appears in the following curated collections.
Recent posts from Ethan Marcotte's RSS feed.
I find them on the street & shadow.
We’d gotten a good three inches of snow overnight. Four? Not sure. Either way, the thing in the main was I’d gotten a late start on shoveling. I’d slept terribly last night, and still had my head submerged in a large mug of coffee when She began lacing her boots. By the time I trudged outside some thirty minutes later, She and one of our upstairs neighbors had already cleared the sidewalks. They’d started shoveling out the little driveway behind our building, so I set to alongside them. I was de...
Our frail thoughts.
I’m trying to write some kind of post to close out 2025, and the words just won’t come. I should’ve started this post weeks ago. But every time I thought about sitting down to write, my brain kept glancing off the idea. Something about it felt entirely too big, too difficult. And now that I’ve finally, finally started typing, it still feels daunting: I am sitting in my living room, a slowly-cooling mug of coffee in my hands, as I stare at one of the sloppiest blog drafts I’ve started in a while....
The line and the stream.
I come from one of the poorest corners of a small, rural state. When I go back to visit, I book a night or two in this big hotel in my neck of the woods. The trips are heartwarming, and this last one was no exception: I got a chance to share a couple meals with old friends and family, surrounded by the hills and forests I still think of as home. This year has felt long and dark, and their faces and voices brightened it. This hotel, though. Let me tell you about it. It’s new, first of all. Even i...
A right to copy.
I was keenly watching updates on the Anthropic copyright lawsuit, in part because every single book I’d ever written appeared in LibGen, the database of pirated books at the heart of the case. When news broke that there was a frankly astonishing settlement in the case, I figured I might be eligible to file a claim for the affected books. I wasn’t expecting a grand payout, mind; it was really about the principle of the thing. However, when I went to the new site created for the settlement, I was...
A carried leaf.
A little over a month ago, I wrapped a project with the City of Boston. It was, in a word, tremendous. I was brought in to help the city’s Digital Service team define a new design system, and I got to do it all alongside Christine Bath, a tremendously talented designer and researcher, and one of my former coworkers from 18F. The project wove together so many of the things I most enjoy about design systems work: interviewing stakeholders, building a map of the products (and teams) the design syst...
If you enjoy Ethan Marcotte, you might also like these blogs.
Adactio
adactio.comJeremy Keith on web standards, progressive enhancement, and the open web.
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents
zeldman.comWeb standards pioneer, founder of A List Apart, and author of Designing with Web Standards.
Sara Soueidan — UI developer
sarasoueidan.comIn depth articles on CSS, SVG, accessibility, and frontend craft.
Heather Burns
heatherburns.techTech policy specialist advocating for privacy, digital rights, and an open web.
Follow Ethan Marcotte
If you want writing that connects the dots between web design, worker power, and the tech industry's blind spots — Ethan's been doing it longer and better than almost anyone.