Jeffrey Zeldman's Blog, page 71
May 28, 2011
Big Web Show No. 49: Popularity
"GUT-PUNCHING HONESTY."- @Boyd Waters
"One of the best BWS episodes yet." – @Piers Rippey
Dan Benjamin and I discuss the intersection of community and popularity on the web and in terms of podcasts and social media. The Big Web Show Episode No. 49: Popularity.
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May 27, 2011
An interview with Jeffrey Zeldman
WALT DISNEY AND ME, a typical day, running Happy Cog, building An Event Apart, what's next for A Book Apart, and more: DIBI, the design/build conference, presents An interview with Jeffrey Zeldman for your pleasure.
(I swear it's a coincidence the last two posts have begun with inset photos of yours truly.)
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May 26, 2011
On Creative Direction
IN MY APPRENTICE DAYS, I worked for Marvin Honig, a Hall of Fame copywriter who created indelible commercials for Alka-Seltzer, Cracker Jack, and Volkswagen during the 1960s and 1970s, and who assumed creative leadership of Doyle Dane Bernbach upon legendary founder Bill Bernbach's death. It was not one of those bloody successions that stain the pages of history and advertising. Bill chose Marvin to carry on in his place.
By the time I met Marvin, he and I were toiling at Campbell-Mithun-Esty. He had been brought in to radically upgrade the financially successful but talent-challenged agency's creative product. I was there because it was the first job I could get in New York.
Marvin was gentle. He never told you how stale your ideas were or how disappointed he was in you for not working harder. He made you believe you were the future, not only of the place, but of the profession.
Besides his warmth, what I remember most is a piece of advice he gave me: "If you're not a creative director by the time you're 40, get out of the business."
Continue reading But What I Really Want to Do is Direct at Cognition, the blog of Happy Cog.
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May 19, 2011
Letter of the Month
Hi Jeffrey,
Back in 2004 we had been running Headscape for three years. Things were going well but personally I was a little dissatisfied with my career. I just wasn't as excited about the web as I had been and was lacking a new challenge and direction.
Anyway, we won a new client that was particularly concerned about accessibility and so I realised I had to brush up my skills in this area. I decided to see if I could find a book on the subject. Bizarrely I ended up buying Designing With Web Standards. I am not sure why I thought it was going to be about accessibility but for some reason I did. Anyway when it arrived from Amazon I quickly discovered that although it did touch on accessibility it was about so much more.
I remember what I now refer to as a pivotal moment in my web career. I was sitting in bed reading your book. I knew nothing really about CSS (other than for setting fonts/colours and I couldn't see what was wrong with the old way of doing things). However as I read, it was like a slow realisation. I remember vividly turning to my wife and saying "This book is amazing. I am going to have to relearn everything I know about building websites". I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. On one hand the enormity of what you were suggesting was overwhelming but on the other hand it was just the injection I needed in my own career.
I reached the end of the book and made a decision. I was going to move the whole of Headscape across to standards based design. Not only that was I was going to do it as soon as possible. By 2005 we had made the transition and have never looked back.
So far this is probably not dissimilar to other stories you have heard. However, it doesn't stop there. I obviously started to follow your blog and you mentioned you were coming to speak in the UK at @Media 2005. For me this was too good an opportunity to miss. I wanted to see this guy who had turned our business upside down. Myself and my cofounders at Headscape booked on the conference.
I had never attended a conference before. In fact I had never spoken to another web designer outside of those I had worked alongside. It is therefore hardly a surprise that @Media blew me away. Yourself and the other speakers were so inspirational. In particular I remember Jeremy Keith's amazing talk on Javascript.
However, the moment that changed everything for me (yes again) was right at the beginning of the conference. Patrick asked various bloggers in the audience to stand up as he mentioned each of their sites. I was overwhelmed by the sense of community and the knowledge in the room. It left me desperate to be apart of that. I left the conference and started building boagworld.com the very next day.
I guess my point is this. If I hadn't bought your book by accident we would never have attended @Media and if I had never done that I would never have founded boagworld.com. Boagworld has transformed Headscape and brings in approximately 90% of our new business. You have helped our business grow, reinvigorated my own passion for the web and allowed me personally to do things (such as travel the world) that I would have only dreamed of.
That deserves my thanks.
Thank you.
Paul Boag [Web Strategist, Broadcaster, Author & Rabble Rouser]
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eMusic.com Facebook is doing it wrong.
eMUSIC.COM IS TRYING to insert a Facebook "Like" button bearing my picture on artist profile pages I view when signed in to my account. Unfortunately, their iframes and CSS work together like fish and bicycles. The result is an ugly, unusable fragment of a Like button, with useless browser chrome and other bits of nonsense.
eMusic.com is doing it wrong. | Flickr – Photo Sharing!
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eMusic.com is doing it wrong.
eMUSIC.COM IS TRYING to insert a Facebook "Like" button bearing my picture on artist profile pages I view when signed in to my account. Unfortunately, their iframes and CSS work together like fish and bicycles. The result is an ugly, unusable fragment of a Like button, with useless browser chrome and other bits of nonsense.
eMusic.com is doing it wrong. | Flickr – Photo Sharing!
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May 16, 2011
Carolyn Wood moves on
CAROLYN WOOD IS LEAVING A List Apart. Over three brilliant years, Carolyn created the position of acquisitions editor and made it shine, bringing the magazine and its readers such articles as Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte, More Meaningful Typography by Tim Brown, Orbital Content by Cameron Koczon, CSS Floats 101 by Noah Stokes, Designing Web Registration Processes for Kids by Debra Levin Gelman, Design Criticism and the Creative Process by Cassie McDaniel, A Simpler Page by Craig Mod, and over 100 others—each of them vital, and at least a dozen of them essential reading for all people who make websites.
Acquisitions editor was not the job Carolyn wanted, but she made it her own, worked on it night and day, and managed the damned difficult feat of running it independently (to keep it agile) while simultaneously informing editor Krista Stevens and me of every move she made. Carolyn also took on the tricky task of conveying initial editorial and technical feedback to writers as they worked to fine-tune submissions. She excelled at this. Writers loved her.
She leaves us to focus on her print magazine work, freelance clients through her content, editorial and design agency Pixelingo, and creative projects. Among those new projects, Carolyn is editor-in-chief of Codex: the journal of Typography, a quarterly print magazine from I Love Typography, and of The Manual, "a new, beautifully crafted journal that takes a fresh look, in print, at design on the web."
I write this goodbye here because we don't yet have a place for me to write it on A List Apart. But that will soon change. Change is all, and even difficult change can be good. We will miss you, Carolyn. Good luck!
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