Jeffrey Zeldman's Blog, page 46
February 20, 2013
You ought to be in pictures: An Event Apart Atlanta 2013
Enjoy! An Event Apart Atlanta 2013 Flickr Pool.
An Event Apart Atlanta has been three days of design, code, and content for people who make websites. If you couldn’t be with us, read Jeremy Keith’s write-ups of the Day 1 sessions and Luke Wroblewski’s write-ups of Days 1 and 2.
Follow today’s live action on A Feed Apart, the official aggregator of An Event Apart.
February 6, 2013
And now for something completely different
IN THESE PAGES I have written on many subjects, but I never expected my ass to be one of them. The untimely passing last year of Hillman Curtis changed that.
Hillman was a friend, an inspiration, an artist admired by many designers and filmmakers. Over a brief but luminous career, he invented himself first as a songwriter in a touring post-punk band, then as an art director and eventually the design director of Macromedia (and Flash evangelist Numero Uno), next as the founder of a boutique design studio and the author of design books that have sold over 150 thousand copies—a staggering achievement in an industry where cracking 10,000 copies sold makes you a rock star.
He was a generous mentor and pal to the digital design community, perpetually sharing his insights and enthusiasm, and encouraging others to do and be everything they could be. If you needed studio space, he would find you a desk. If you were low on funds, he would help you land a suitable gig. Hillman and I worked on a couple of projects together when I first founded Happy Cog. The jobs went well and the work was good. He was a supportive and honorable design director.
Hillman’s final public creative incarnation was as a filmmaker. He is probably best known for his “Artist Series” about designers including Milton Glaser and Paula Scher, and artists David Byrne and Brian Eno.
Even his personal life was inspiring. He had two children and a wife, and the love in that beautiful family could be seen a mile away.
Colon cancer took Hillman from us on April 18, 2012. He was only 51.
I don’t know if Hillman’s cancer could have been prevented with a simple screening, but I know a colonoscopy is recommended for most men and women when they reach a certain age, and I know I love my daughter very much.
And so, this morning, for her sake and per my doctor’s recommendation, I set aside feelings of embarrassment and fears of discomfort and had the test.
It’s really not bad. There’s no pain, it takes only a few minutes, and you’re unconscious.
This post may cross a taste line for some readers; sorry about that. I’m also sorry this page won’t help you write better HTML or sharpen your collaborative skills. But I love you and would like you to stick around.
February 4, 2013
A List Apart 5.0 – Highlights From The First Ten Days
ON JANUARY 25, for the fifth time since 1998, we overhauled A List Apart, the periodical for people who make websites. In addition to its traditional well-vetted articles, the new 5.0 model sports fresh streams of content in a responsive format designed by Mike Pick and Tim Murtaugh. If you are just joining us, here are some of the highlights from the first ten days:
Issue No. 368
A List Apart 5.0 – an A List Apart article by JZ. A tour of strategic highlights, a glimpse into the design process, and a promise of things to come.
What We Learned in 2012, shared by some of A List Apart’s authors and readers.
More Articles – hundreds of illuminating insights into the design, development, and content arts.
Columns
We’ve introduced opinion columns by some of the smartest people we know in this industry. They’ll appear between issues at the rate of one or two per week.
Looking Beyond User-Centered Design – an A List Apart column by Cennydd Bowles: “To treat design as a science is to retreat to the illusory safety of numbers, where designers are mostly seen as agents of skewing the odds in your favor. This can start a race to the bottom…”
Picture Yourself in a Boat on a River – an A List Apart column by Derek Powazek: “Welcome to Fertile Medium, an advice column for people who live online. Each edition, I’ll take a question from you about living and building social spaces online, and do my best to answer.”
Windows on the Web – an A List Apart column by Karen McGrane: “It’s time to stop imagining that smartphones, tablets, and desktops are containers that each hold their own content, optimized for a particular browsing or reading experience. Users don’t think of it that way. Instead, users imagine that each device is its own window onto the web.”
Blog
On Alt Text – an A List Apart blog post by JZ. A few sentences that generated a great deal of controversy in the accessibility community.
More Thoughts About Blockquotes than are Strictly Required – an A List Apart blog post by Tim Murtaugh. Markup geeks, here is your meat.
Why Are Links Blue? – an A List Apart blog post by JZ on the eternal question.
Thanks and Praise
Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart
January 24, 2013
Big Web Show 81: SwissMiss
IN EPISODE No. 81 of The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”) I interview Tina Roth Eisenberg, creator of swissmiss and tattly, founder of Creative Mornings, and cofounder of teuxdeux. We discuss discovering your path as a designer; why the motto “let it go or fix it” can help you create great product ideas; how to be a good boss; and how having children can have a profoundly positive influence your career.
Listen to Episode 81 of The Big Web Show.
More Tina
@swissmiss
swissmiss (blog)
teuxdeux
Creative Mornings
tattly
Studiomates
Jen Mussari
@destroytoday
Destroy Today (blog)
Greg Storey
Mule Design
Coudal.com
The Deck Ad Network
January 17, 2013
Big Web Show 80: Daring Fireball’s John Gruber
IN EPISODE No. 80 of The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”) I interview Daring Fireball author John Gruber about his background in computer programming and journalism; the joy of designing print layouts with QuarkXPress and the transition from print to web; why investors who are angry at Apple have it wrong; why some web standards geeks who once passionately disliked Apple have grown warmer toward the company; and the secret story behind the name, “Daring Fireball.”
Listen to the episode.
Portrait by George Del Barrio
January 16, 2013
Worst Snow Ever
WORST snow ever. If you are eight and want to play. Because it has already melted. Climate change, you suck the Charlie Brown out of this world.
January 14, 2013
The Theme Line of Dr Moreau
I DREAMED I was designing an identity system for the mad scientist Dr Moreau, who kept changing his ridiculously long theme line after I’d arranged the type. “No, no, no! I’m not saving life, I’m creating it!”
January 10, 2013
Big Web Show 79: Eric Meyer
IN EPISODE No. 79 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”), I interview CSS guru, Microformats co-founder, O’Reilly and New Riders author, and An Event Apart co-founder Eric A. Meyer (@meyerweb) about upcoming CSS modules including grid layout, flexbox, and regions; his career trajectory from college graduate webmaster to world-renowned author, consultant, and lecturer; founding and running a virtual community (CSS-Discuss); becoming an O’Reilly writer; the early days of the Mosaic Browser and The Web Standards Project’s CSS Samurai; “The Web Behind” variation of The Web Ahead podcast, and more.
Listen to the episode.
About Eric
Eric A. Meyer has been working with the web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML and CSS. He is the principal consultant for Complex Spiral Consulting and lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a much nicer city than you’ve been led to believe. Author of “Eric Meyer on CSS” (New Riders), “Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide” (O’Reilly & Associates), “CSS2.0 Programmer’s Reference” (Osborne/McGraw-Hill), and the CSS Browser Compatibility Charts, Eric co-founded and co-directs An Event Apart, the design conference “for people who make websites,” and speaks at a variety of conferences on the subject of standards, CSS use, and web design.
URLs
http://twitter.com/meyerweb
http://meyerweb.com
http://aneventapart.com
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-regions/
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid-layout/
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-flexbox/
http://css-discuss.org
http://microformats.org
Photo: Chris Jennings
January 3, 2013
Bear Shot in Design Studio
“New office mascot: @zeldman rocking a bear costume” by Phillip Reyland. Photographed at A Space Apart, NYC.
Bear suit courtesy of Shopify. No animals were harmed. Happy Twenty-Thirteen, everybody.
December 23, 2012
Red All Over
ALL I REMEMBER from my dream is flushing a red towel down the toilet. It was evidence of some crime. There was a moment of horror, midway through, when it seemed that the towel would get jammed in the pipe, requiring the services of a plumber—whom I would then have to kill, because he knew too much.
