Jeffrey Zeldman's Blog, page 45
May 1, 2013
Happy Cog: Building Hand-Crafted Websites
OUR FRIENDS at Typecast shot a video of some of Happy Cog’s designers discussing readability in design and the importance of great type tools to our process.
Happy Cog: building hand-crafted websites from Typecast on Vimeo.
April 25, 2013
Become a Web Developer: Avi Flombaum of The Flatiron School on Big Web Show 89
AVI FLOMBAUM, dean of The Flatiron School, is my guest in Big Web Show Episode No. 89. A 28-year-old Rubyist, Skillsharer, storyteller and entrepreneur, Avi founded Designer Pages and NYC on Rails before creating The Flatiron School—a 12 week, full-time program designed to turn you into a web developer.
Listen to Episode No. 89 of The Big Web Show.
URLS, URLS, URLS
The Flatiron School
Huffington Post on Avi Flombaum
Designer Pages
NYC on Rails
@flatironschool
@aviflombaum
Skillshare Master Teacher
Avi Flombaum on Linkedin
April 11, 2013
Big Web Show: Greg Storey
GREG STOREY of Happy Cog is my guest in Episode No. 88 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”). We discuss the Austin tech and design scene; real and virtual office models; Greg’s upcoming book (with Carl Smith) for people transitioning to web design; new methods of publishing on multiple platforms; and the inspiration behind the Digital PM Summit.
Listen to Episode No. 88 of The Big Web Show.
URLS, URLS, URLS
https://twitter.com/Brilliantcrank
http://www.airbagindustries.com
http://www.gregstorey.com
http://happycog.com
http://dpm2013.com
http://bureauofdigitalaffairs.com
http://alistapart.com/article/readingdesign
http://www.magplus.com
http://xoxco.com/packagr/
http://takingyourtalenttotheweb.com
http://www.fivesimplesteps.com
http://dribbble.com/Brilliantcrank
http://instagram.com/brilliantcrank
About Greg
In eighteen years leading interactive creative and development teams, Greg Storey has launched projects for industries ranging from education to retail, gaming to medicine, media to politics. His amazing roster of clients includes Sundance Film Festival, The Nation, W3C, MSNBC, Today Show, AOL, New York Magazine, DiVX, and SpeedTV.
Greg’s ideas, and his work as a creative director and designer, have been profiled in Communication Arts, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC-TV, Salon Magazine, The Associated Press, and beyond. He serves as a resource for journalists, researching new media stories for a number of well-known publications.
As a writer, he has become a voice in the web design and development community through his personal site, Airbag Industries, and publications like A List Apart. Greg serves on the Board of Advisors for South by Southwest Interactive and has been a presenter as well.
In 2005, Greg started his own studio, which grew to eight employees and a number of strategic partners in less than four years. In 2009, Jeffrey Zeldman and Greg Hoy approached Greg Storey with a plan to merge his company with Happy Cog. Today, Greg oversees the operations and expansion of Happy Cog’s newest base of operations in Austin, TX.
This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by An Event Apart.
April 9, 2013
ALA 373: Hack Your Maps, Grow Your Design Business
WE INTRODUCE new web design skills and share design business growth strategies in Issue No. 373 of A List Apart for people who make websites:
Hack Your Maps
by YOUNG HAHN
Ever taken apart a digital map? Worked with a map as a critical part of your design? Developed tricks, hacks, workarounds, or progressive enhancements for maps? Walk through a design process to implement a modern-day web map. Let’s make maps part of the collective conversation we have as designers.
Growing Your Design Business
by JASON BLUMER
If you want to grow in a sustainable, satisfying way, then you need to pay attention to how you’re growing, not just how much. After all, a bigger company isn’t necessarily a better one. Let’s look at four common pitfalls of growth in the design industry, and how to avoid them.
Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart.
April 5, 2013
Big Web Show: Squarespace
SQUARESPACE CEO and founder Anthony Casalena is my guest in Episode 87 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”).
We discuss the platform’s capabilities and the three markets it serves (consumer, designer, developer); the journey from one-person start-up to 120-person company; the launch of Squarespace’s ecommerce platform; how to design a start-up that makes money the day it launches; ways to build community around a non-open-source platform; the effectiveness of good old-fashioned traditional advertising in marketing an internet company like Squarespace; staffing up and laying people off; and much more.
Anthony is the founder and CEO of Squarespace, which he started from his dorm room in 2003. During the company’s early years, Anthony acted as the sole engineer, designer and support representative for the entire Squarespace platform, allowing for it to be a stable and profitable business from the outset.
In addition to his main responsibilities in running the company and setting overall product strategy, he remains actively involved in the engineering, design, and product teams within the organization. Anthony holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.
@acasalena
www.squarespace.com
answers.squarespace.com
This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by Shutterstock.com. Use offer code “BIGWEBSHOW3” to save 30% off any Shutterstock photo package.
March 29, 2013
Big Web Show: Monkey Do!
IN EPISODE No. 86 of The Big Web Show, I interview Monkey Do studio’s Michael Pick and Tim Murtaugh.
Mike, Tim, and I discuss the A List Apart redesign, responsive images and type, CSS Zen Garden, organic design processes, the future of CMS systems, designing a food truck app, and more.
TIM MURTAUGH has been building web sites since 1997 and specializes in delivering standards-based HTML5/CSS templates. His eye for design and serious affinity for clean code allow him to painlessly integrate his templates into larger systems without sacrificing user experience or aesthetics. Tim started in the non-profit world, moved on to start-ups, shifted to an agency, upgraded to publishing, and from thence: Monkey Do. Tim can be found on Twitter at @murtaugh.
MICHAEL PICK approaches web design from the perspective of both art director and front-end developer. He primarily creates clean and concise design systems for websites, but is also known to get his hands dirty with Flash, HTML/CSS, and JavaScript development. Over the years he has worked as a cog in a large agency, an in-house art director, and a humble freelancer, and has picked up a few awards along the way. He holds a BD in Communication Design from NSCAD in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Mike tweets as @mikepick.
This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by Shutterstock.com. Get 30% off any package with discount code “BIGWEBSHOW3.”
http://monkeydo.biz
https://twitter.com/mikepick
https://twitter.com/murtaugh
http://html5reset.org
https://github.com/murtaugh/HTML5-Reset
http://alistapart.com
http://aneventapart.com
March 27, 2013
140 Characters is a Joke
THERE IS ALWAYS more to the story than what we are told. I am not omniscient. It is better to light a single candle than to join a lynch mob. Other people’s behavior is not my business. Truth is hard, epigrams are easy. Anything worth saying takes more than 140 characters. Blogging’s not dead. F____ the 140 character morality police.
March 26, 2013
Third-party metadata, honest web aesthetics
IN ISSUE No. 72 of A List Apart for people who make websites:
“Like”-able Content: Spread Your Message with Third-Party Metadata
by CLINTON FORRY
Spread your content and control its appearance on Facebook and Twitter. Use third-party metadata tools (Facebook OG, Twitter Cards) without feeling dirty.
Material Honesty on the Web
by KEVIN GOLDMAN
Kevin Goldman forecasts increased longevity for our work and our careers if we apply the principles of material honesty to our digital world.
Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart
March 18, 2013
Dribbble’s Dan Cederholm on Big Web Show No. 85
DAN CEDERHOLM is my guest on Big Web Show No. 85, sponsored by Lynda.com.
Dan is co-founder and designer of Dribbble, a vibrant community for sharing screenshots of your work, and the founder and principal of SimpleBits, a tiny web design studio. A recognized expert in the field of standards-based web design, he has worked with YouTube, Microsoft, Google, MTV, ESPN, Electronic Arts, Blogger, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, and others. He also received a TechFellow award for Product Design & Marketing in early 2012.
Dan is the author of four books: CSS3 For Web Designers (A Book Apart), Handcrafted CSS (New Riders), Bulletproof Web Design (New Riders), and Web Standards Solutions (Friends of ED). He’s currently an aspiring clawhammer banjoist and occasionally wears a baseball cap.
Cloudtastrophe
A VIRUS spoofing my return email address has apparently been emailing many people. I know this because some of these viral email messages bounce back to my Gmail account as undeliverable. Mistaking these reports for actual messages sent by me, Gmail has decided I’m too active a user, and forbidden me to send any more mail today.
I’m a Google Apps user with a multi-gigabyte Gmail account and I’ve sent less than a dozen actual messages today because I am home sick with a cold. But Gmail doesn’t know that. And Gmail doesn’t care. Because Gmail isn’t real, not even in the David Sleight sense. It’s a set of equations programmed by fallible human beings, and it controls my life and yours.
There is no one to talk to at Google about my service problem because there is no there there. The services I pay for are delivered by robot magic in the cloud. When something goes wrong, it just goes wrong. There’s nobody to track down the virus’s origin and make it stop. There’s nobody to say, “This user hasn’t actually sent these messages.” (I keep marking the returned mails as “spam,” but Google hasn’t caught on, probably because customer service problems aren’t supposed to be reported by inference.)
My friend wears a shirt that says “The Cloud Is A Lie,” but that isn’t quite the truth. More like, the cloud is a customer service problem. One I just found myself on the wrong end of.
Google to customer: Go fuck yourself. In the cloud.
