The award winning Big Web Show features special guests and topics like web publishing, art direction, content strategy, typography, web technology, and more. It's everything web that matters. Hosted by Jeffrey Zeldman.
Front-end architect and speaker Mina Markham is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Mina discusses her career path, her work at as a senior engineer at Slack, how she came to create the Hillary Clinton UI pattern library “Pantsuit,” her time at IBM, helping others and inviting women of color into STEM fields, becoming a public speaker in spite of deep introversion, a recent South African safari, air travel, conferences, the joys of visiting Italy, and more. Enjoy a relaxed and illuminating glimpse into the life of a private and highly creative person.
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Legendary computer scientist, web standards pioneer, and indie-web proponent Tantek Çelik is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.
The secret history of standards in our web browsers. How web standards moved from academic ideas that sometimes couldn’t even be implemented to the foundation of our modern web. The rift between standards-oriented, CSS-and-accessibility-loving web developers and those who rely on powerful and sophisticated toolchains: can it be bridged?
The Flash years and today. Indieweb tools and the independent web community: what it’s about and how to get started. Readers versus social readers. Taking back privacy and the ownership of our content.
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Founder and business development consultant Joe Rinaldi (That Was Clutch, Philamade, Bureau of Digital) is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Agency and freelance networking, mining contacts for work, honesty in client services, what they don’t teach in design school, the value of having worked in service.
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Why do companies de-prioritize accessibility? Making a digital map accessible to the blind. Pros and cons of the straw test. Why simulating a disability is not the same as working with disabled people. Using Twitter threads to prototype book chapters. How diversity (including neurodiversity and diversity of ability) makes for a better product. Changing small habits in your life leads to changing big ones.
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Coder, writer, composer, and founding developer of WordPress Matt Mullenweg is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.
Open Source will save us. The WordPress 5.0 rollout. When Matthew met Jeffrey. Browsers in the age of Blink. AMP & HTML. Gutenberg: blocks and key commands. IE5. Box models. Google: still doing no evil?
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Basecamp founder, New York Times best-selling author, and web software pioneer Jason Fried is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. The two discuss Jason’s latest book (co-authored with David Heinemeier Hannson), It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, which The Economist called “by far the best thing on management published this year.” Also: the secrets of Basecamp, the magic of sleep, the sameness of agencies’ portfolio sites, why Basecamp doesn’t user test, and more.
Note: We apologize for Jeffrey's audio quality in this episode, but Jason Fried says so many smart things we decided we had to share this conversation anyway. It's worth it!
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Web design pioneer, Clearleft chief executive, and UX thought leader Andy Budd chats with Big Web Show host Jeffrey Zeldman about the failings and triumphs of our design community over the past 20 years, why the success of design thinking killed the market for design studios, and how to reinvent your studio or agency for today’s market.
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Jeffrey MacIntyre, a long-time independent UX consultant and researcher specializing in thoughtful digital personalization, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. The two Jeffreys discuss personalization and its intersection with AI, the business opportunity of responsible personalization, aligning personalization with business operations, the secret history of berry picking, the value of a good taxonomy, personalization versus customization, avoiding the “creep” factor, and much more. A worthwhile episode for business executives and marketers as well as the designers and coders who serve them.
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Long-time (since 1994) web design practitioner Jason Pamental, author of Responsive Typography from O’Reilly, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. For more than an hour, the two designers geek out over responsive typography, the history of type on the web, and the explosive creative potential of the new variable fonts.
Multiple Masters. FF Meta. Storing the offsets of the curve points. The three second timeout. Why FOUT is a feature, not a bug. Compensating for the differences between the web font and the backup font. The tragedy of Typecast, the new hope of Figma. Adidas. Nick Sherman. Paula Scher. Mandy Michael. And more.
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Katel LeDu, Co-founder of the No, You Go podcast and CEO of A Book Apart, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Topics include: Getting comfortable putting yourself out there when you’re really more of a behind-the-scenes person. Starting a podcast. The life of a photo director at National Geographic. Asking for help. Community outreach—diversity and inclusion. What it’s like to have your therapist as a guest on your podcast. Leading by example. Walking the walk. Finding new authors and new voices. Imposter anxiety and narcissism.
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The new season of The Big Web Show gets a running start with the brilliant and delightful Rachel Andrew, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, co-founder of Perch and Notist, author of over 30 books including The New CSS Layout, and more. Rachel and host Jeffrey Zeldman discuss learning to say no, productivity hacks, finding the inspiration to write and the courage to begin public speaking, the latest news with CSS Grid Layout, leaving Apple hardware behind, and the pleasures of Pixel.
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Jen Simmons—Designer Advocate at Mozilla, creator of Firefox Grid Inspector, host of Layout Land and The Web Ahead, member of the CSS Working Group, coiner of Intrinsic Web Design, and general force of nature—is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.
Everything we thought we knew about web design just changed. Making sites that sing. Designing with the viewport in mind. A time-based storytelling journey. Real whitespace on the web. Real designer/developer tools: the Shapes Editor, Grid Inspector, and next-generation fonts panel in Firefox.
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Kevin M. Hoffman, VP Design at Capital One, and author of Meeting Design, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. “Design is not the end result.” How to assert control when you feel powerless. This one weird trick that can resolve conflict in difficult meetings. The relationship between meetings and change. Hacking your meetings, hacking your company culture. Five kinds of bad meetings. Escaping our biases, assumptions, and patterns. How illustration changes writing. A Jeff Veen joint. Designing an environment that lets people succeed. How design is like music and why you are not Prince. A new way of writing a book.
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UX and IA pioneer Peter Morville, founder of Semantic Studios and author of four major design books discusses his latest, Planning For Everything, with host Jeffrey Zeldman. When Peter Met Lou, “Peak chaos,” belief bubbles, why the dichotomy between planning and doing is false, how to plan a family vacation swimming with sharks, striking a balance between planning and improvisation, and more.
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Creative director, advisor, designer, developer, author (Pricing Design), speaker, mentor, musician, and entrepreneur (SuperFriendly, SuperBooked) Dan Mall is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Running a studio, pitching, value pricing, the apprentice program, “Make Grunt do it,” how to start a startup, “the most exciting design systems are boring,” walking away from big pitches, launching a service to help you find work.
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Mike Essl, Dean at Cooper Union School of Art in New York, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.
Topics: The designer as hobbyist. “I was an expert witness for the Associated Press.” Design is a machine. Working in a comic book store. The Cooper Union coincidences. Web design in 1995 versus today. New York design versus San Francisco design. Systems making versus picture making. Kind of Bloop.
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David Sleight, Design Director at ProPublica, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces “investigative journalism with moral force.” David is a web designer, creative director, and leader at the intersection of publishing and digital technology.
Topics include: Stop blaming the algorithm. Design ethics. Stories as products. How the role of the story affects art direction. Our medium needs design that is faster and design that is slower. The renaissance of The Washington Post. How reporting creates products. Can reporters be part of the Resistance?
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Designer Josh Clark (@bigmediumjosh) is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Josh founded the consultancy BIG MEDIUM, whose slogan is “Design for what’s next.” He designs mobile and IoT experiences, AIs, and bots; is the author of Designing For Touch and Tapworthy; and got his start as the creator of Couch to 5K.
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Jen Simmons (@JenSimmons), Designer Advocate at Mozilla, creators Layout Land, host of The Web Ahead, and driving force with Rachel Andrew behind CSS Grid in our browsers, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Free speech, Libertarianism, and doxxing. The CSS Grid Inspector and other tools coming our way—including Flexbox Inspector and Shape Path editor, Variable Fonts tooling, and tools for font features. #metoo and #blacklivesmatter. Video blogging’s unheralded heroes. Rough consensus and running code. Layout Land and modern layouts. Team teaching with Rachel Andrew. What goes into a great instructional video.
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Designer, entrepreneur, and social media consultant Sarah Parmenter is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Working with celebrities, the wrong way to save a troubled brand, using social media is not the same as consulting on social media, design ten years ago and now, can one web designer do it all?
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Michael Simmons, designer and CEO of Flexibits (makers of Fantastical and Cardhop) is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Designing “professional but not professional boring” experiences. Usefulness versus “garnish.” How animation can convey brand values. Creating experiences instead of feature sets. Instagram vs Snapchat. “The car that sells itself” and marketing by letting the product speak for itself.
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Host Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Bram Stein, Typekit’s director of web fonts and author of the Webfont Handbook (A Book Apart, 2017). The two designers discuss creating great font stacks, optimizing web font performance, FOUT versus FOIT, the horror of fallback fonts, and new technology including variable fonts and font-display: FOUT or FOIT.
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Ben Jackson, founder & principal of Brooklyn advising firm For the Win, and creator of the open-source onboarding app Aloha, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.
Ben and Jeffrey discuss service design, the opportunity cost of bad onboarding experiences, the 4Cs of good onboarding (compliance, clarity, culture, and community), the Aloha chatbot and how it fits into the broader trend of HR tech consumerization, and more.
Programming since 1992, Ben is a designer, engineer, editor, and entrepreneur, a past director of Mobile for VICE Media, past mobile lead for Longform, and past iOS lead for The New York Times. He has written and edited bylines for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and VICE; spoken at SXSW, Ignite NY, and Social Media Week; and volunteers on the curriculum Advisory Board, Coalition for Queens.
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Rachel Nabors, author of Animation at Work (A Book Apart, 2017) stops by The Big Web Show to discuss how animation can help ease cognitive load in UX; creating the illusion of life; developing data to make the case for animation; pattern libraries; prototyping; and the link between animation and music.
Rachel Nabors has been an award-winning cartoonist and graphic novelist, who parlayed her storytelling skills into a web design and development career. She has done projects with Mozilla, been an invited expert to the W3C, and currently works at Microsoft. Rachel tends the web animation community via the Animation at Work Slack and her web animation newsletter.
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Clearleft’s Andy Budd and host Zeldman discuss the changing role design agencies must play to remain relevant; the rise of in-house design; working with pattern libraries (since 2008!); whether the “golden age” of web design and blogging is over; and much more.
Andy Budd has been blogging about design and technology since 2003. He was one of the leading lights of the web standards movement and his book, CSS Mastery, sold over 60,000 copies and has been translated into a dozen languages. Andy is a founding partner at UX design consultancy Clearleft; the curator of dConstruct, one of the UK’s most popular design conferences; and the force behind UX London, the UK’s first dedicated usability, IA, and UX design event.
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As designers, we create human-centered interactions and experiences. Empathetic purpose drives our every decision. This same mentality, turned inward, forms the cornerstone of something amazing: a creative culture. Jeffrey Zeldman interviews designer, creative director, iconist, and author Justin Dauer (@pseudoroom) about his new book, Cultivating a Creative Culture—now available everywhere.
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Illustrator, designer, and author Geri Coady (@hellogeri) is @zeldman’s guest. The two designers discuss blogging, learning graphic design, transitioning to web design, color accessibility tips and strategies, book writing, and the upcoming travel blog, Geri Draws Japan.
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Nick Disabato (@nickd) and @zeldman discuss heat maps, conversion rates, design specialization, writing for the web, Jakob Nielsen, and the early days of blogging in Episode #159 of The Big Web Show – “everything web that matters.”
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Internet veterans Jim @Coudal & Jeffrey @Zeldman on the death of blogging, the birth of Field Notes, the virtues of a subscription model, and much more. Begins in tears, ends in triumph. One of the most fun (and most inspiring) episodes ever.
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ProPublica (@ProPublica) design director David Sleight (@stuntbox) is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.
How do publications brand themselves when a platform removes their fonts, art, and layout? What is “journalism in the public interest” and how does it differ from traditional reporting? What is bespoke web design and how does it work at ProPublica? What’s next for the ProPublica platform? How do newspapers retain readers in the age of AMP?
ProPublica (“Journalism in the Public Interest”) was a recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting, and a 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting. David is a publication designer and web geek, formerly at BusinessWeek, Pearson Ed, and consulting land.
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Dan Brown is a web designer who specializes in IA, design research, and leading teams. He's written three books: Practical Design Discovery (2017), Designing Together (2013), and Communicating Design (2011), and created a card game, Surviving Design Projects, to help designers practice conflict resolution. Dan and his business partner Nathan Curtis co-founded DC-based UX design firm EightShapes in 2006.
What is discovery and why is it important to design? What’s the difference between Discovery and UX Strategy? or Research? How can you sell Discovery to organizations and people who are afraid of it? How has design changed since you got started in the 1990s?
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CSS Grid Layout is in Firefox and Chrome, and coming to Safari. Jeffrey Zeldman talks about the new spec with one of its foremost advocates, Rachel Andrew – a web developer, writer, and public speaker from Bristol, UK. Rachel is a member of the CSS Working Group, a Google Developer Expert, the co-founder of the Perch CMS, the publisher of CSS Layout News (a weekly collection of tutorials, news, and information on all things CSS layout), and the author or co-author of countless articles and 30 books, including Get Ready for CSS Grid Layout, A Pocket Guide to CSS Modules, The Profitable Side Project Handbook, and HTML 5 For Web Designers, 2nd Edition.
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Have front-end and UX separated as practices? Is the time of the designer/coder over? The great Jen Simmons (Mozilla, CSS Grid, Layout Land) is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest in a sharply focused episode of The Big Web Show.
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Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman) interviews designer/entrepreneur/author Jaimee Newberry (@jaimeejaimee), co-founder of Picture This Clothing, Tiny Challenges, and WWDC Girls. Launching a company that goes viral; applying design principles to your life; “it’s not about what’s next, it’s about what’s important;” coping with burnout; the psychology of change; “we’ve accidentally spent $20 on marketing;” and more.
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Jeffrey Zeldman interviews George Hahn (georgehahn.com), writer, actor, web designer, and self-made thousandaire in hot pursuit of sartorial stealth and effective living. Writing tweets for Joan Rivers, doing a nude scene in “Sex and the City,” getting paid and finding clients as a designer, is the web still a people’s medium, leaving New York for Cleveland, web design then and now, “They’ll find out I’m a fraud and a failure,” will web ever get to retire?
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Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Craig Hockenberry (@chockenberry), web and Mac software developer for over 20 years, and author of Making Sense of Color Management (A Book Apart, 2016). Screen evolution, color profiles, writing the first color gamut media query, how Webkit queries your screen to understand how many colors you can display, the Android problem, the 10th anniversary of Twitter, the 10th anniversary of the first Twitter app, the history of the word “tweet,” computer desktop customization in the 1990s, web design then versus now, and much more.
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Host Jeffrey Zeldman chats with front-end developer extraordinaire Brad Frost, author of the new book Atomic Design. In a freewheeling romp through a wonderland of design and technology references, the two web pros discuss Pattern Lab and style guides, being there for the iPad launch, working with big brands, how to say no and make the client happy you said it, avoiding antipatterns, mobile versus “the real web” in 2009, dressing for success, contributing to open source projects, building a community, the early days of Brad’s career, and that new book of his.
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Host @zeldman checks in with frequent guest @sazzy to discuss blogging, design, social media consulting, Britain, America, speaking, travel, and, oh, yes, that election.
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Jeremy Osborn is the Academic Director of Aquent Gymnasium, an innovative MOOC for designers, developers and marketing professionals, and the author of popular books on web technology and design software, including his latest, HTML5 Digital Classroom. He and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss the rapidly changing landscape of modern web design; how to keep learning and stay inspired; remembering the human being you're designing for, and the joy of stress cases.
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Kate O’Neill is a tech humanist, author, keynote speaker, consultant, web design veteran, former Nashville songwriter, and the author of Pixels and Place: Connecting Human Experience Across Physical and Digital Spaces.
Kate and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss Integrated Human Experience Design; the biggest opportunities for innovation, for profit, and for moving culture forward; working at Netflix; conversion optimization; Peter Drucker in the 21st century; and whether she has seen Daredevil in her adopted neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, NYC.
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Glenn Davis is the creator of Cool Site of the Day; cofounder of Project Cool; and cofounder, Executive Committee member, and essayist for The Web Standards Project, which he also hosted. Glenn was a leading force behind Liquid Design, an approach that predates Responsive Web Design by about 20 years. He taught everyone how to do “DHTML” via his Project Cool tutorials. In the Silicon Valley from 1994 through the early 2000s, Glenn was a huge creative force.
In a lively hour, Glenn and host Jeffrey Zeldman discuss life before the animated GIF; “perceived bandwidth;” building their first websites; getting from Gopher to the web; SLIP and PPP connections; discovering UNIX; the story behind Cool Site of the Day; the battle for standards in our browsers; the web then versus the web now; and much, much more.
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Art director June Kim and host Jeffrey Zeldman discuss the newly launched, search-focused redesign of Epicurious.com. Approaching design through the lens of utility. Looking outside your own product category when researching for a redesign. Quick view and other functions. What Netflix has to do with a recipe site. The founding of Epicurious as a website in 1995. How Instagram, Pinterest, and mobile devices have changed the way people interact with web content. The view from the 33rd floor of One World Trade Center. Finding inspiration in unexpected places.
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Eric Meyer (@meyerweb), co-author of Design For Real Life, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Edge cases versus stress cases, identifying your assumptions, design pre-mortems, QA’ing for emotion, and more.
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Aarron Walter and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss launching a design education initiative at InVision, building a UX practice at MailChimp, putting design at the heart of strategy, managing teams, the secret life of Walt Disney, and more. Aarron is the VP of Design Education at InVision. He founded the UX practice at MailChimp and is the author of Designing for Emotion and other books about design.
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Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest is Abby Covert, Information Architect; curator of IA Summit; co-founder of World IA Day; president of IA Institute; teacher in the Products of Design MFA program at New York’s School of Visual Arts; and author of How To Make Sense of Any Mess, a “brilliant introduction to information architecture” (Peter Morville) that is frequently purchased at Amazon with Don’t Make Me Think and The Design of Everyday Things, the two classics of usable design.
Discussed: why IA matters now more than ever, the difference between IA and content strategy (IA is building the vehicle, CS is putting fueling it and making sure it won’t run out of gas), writing and designing a book, building agreement among stakeholders, “not having opinions, not having ideas of one’s own,” IA’s origins in language and structure, the fun of the IA Summit, the creation and growth of World IA Day, the joy of teaching, and more.
Rachel Andrew—longtime web developer and web standards champion, co-founder of the Perch CMS, and author of Get Ready For CSS Grid Layout—is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Topics include working with CSS Grid Layout, how Grid enables designers to “do something different” with web layout, why designers need to start experimenting with Grid Layout now, how front-end design has morphed into an engineering discipline, learning HTML and CSS versus learning frameworks, and the magical self-reinventions of David Bowie, RIP.
Longtime web developer, lecturer, and web standards evangelist Aaron Gustafson and host Jeffrey Zeldman discuss the newly published update to Aaron’s best-selling industry classic “love letter to the web,” Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences With Progressive Enhancement, 2nd Edition (New Riders, 2015).
Topics covered include: Aaron's superhero origin story as a creator of progressively enhanced websites and applications; "we’re not building things we haven't built on the web before;" "creating opportunities for people outside your comfort zone;" development in the world of Node.js; "every interface is a conversation;" "visual design is an enhancement;" "interaction is an enhancement;" nerding out over early web terminal interfaces; Microsoft, Opera, and more.
Save 35% off Aaron Gustafson’s Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences With Progressive Enhancement, 2nd Edition when you enter discount code AARON35 at checkout.
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Touch introduces physicality to designs that were once strictly virtual, and puts forth a new test: How does this design feel in the hand? Josh Clark’s new book, “Designing For Touch,” guides designers through this new touchscreen frontier, and is the launchpad for today’s Big Web Show discussion between author Clark and host Jeffrey Zeldman.
In a fast-paced, freewheeling conversation, Josh and Jeffrey discuss why game designers are some of our most talented and inspiring interaction designers; the economy of motion; perceptions of value when viewing objects on touchscreen versus desktop computer; teaching digital designers to think like industrial designers (and vice-versa); long press versus force touch; how and when to make gestures discoverable; and much more.
Josh Koenig, Co-Founder & Head of Product for Pantheon Website Management Platform, is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest in "An Infrastructure For Websites," Episode 138 of The Big Web Show ("Everything Web That Matters.")
Josh & Z discuss how the industry is evolving, how smartphones are driving web growth, integrating a pull request with a server, the connection of the web to real life (and the fact that it’s no longer a meaningful distinction), the idealism of the early web, why technology doesn't solve human problems, why truly revolutionary change occurs only when new technologies fade into the background, and a future in which the back-end grunt work of website creation is automated.
Josh Koenig is a Co-Founder and Head of Product for Pantheon, the website management platform for WordPress and Drupal. Prior to that he was a founder at Chapter Three, a web consultancy based in San Francisco. Josh has been involved in building the internet with Open Source and Free software for nearly two decades.
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Digital law specialist Heather Burns is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Heather is the author of The Web Designer’s Guide to the Consumer Rights Directive, a “recovering web designer,” and the founder of a monthly ebulletin with digital law and policy news you need to know.
She explains: “While I am not a lawyer, the legislators who create digital laws are not internet users, much less designers or developers. Therein lies the problem. I view my work on digital law and policy as an attempt to build a bridge between the two parties.”
Heather and Jeffrey discuss absurd and unjust laws governing transactions on the web, including the birth of the EU cookie law (all 27 versions of it), the slow pace of government versus lightning internet development, and why web design and development need consultative status and a seat at the table.
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Jeffrey Zeldman’s Big Web Show guest is front-end designer Maya Benari (@mayabenari), a leading contributor to the U.S. Web Design Standards. Recently launched, and deservedly much lauded, the U.S. Web Design Standards consist of open source UI components plus a visual style guide, and are designed to create consistency and beautiful user experiences across U.S. federal government websites. Accessibility, semantics, and mobile-first responsive web design are baked in, right out of the box. Maya and Jeffrey discuss the genesis of the project, the teams behind the scenes, and why improving people’s lives is sexier than building sandwich rating apps.
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Designer/developer Val Head (@vlh) is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest. Val is the co-founder of the Web Design Day conference, co-host with Cennydd Bowles of the Motion and Meaning podcast, and author of CSS Pocket Guide (5 Simple Steps) and the upcoming Designing Interface Animations (Rosenfeld Media). Val and Zeldman discuss how to create an animation style guide, the genius of user queries, the web animation API, frame by frame animation, animating with math in Flash, Disney animation and the illusion of life, animating for meaning, how to animate without triggering vestibular disorders, resources for accessible animations, and what to eat in Lawrenceville, PA.
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Khoi Vinh is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest this week. Khoi is a Principle Designer at Adobe, design chair at Wildcard, and former design director at NYTimes.com. He blogs at subtraction.com. The two designers discuss the surprising results of Khoi's recent design tools survey; being creative on the iPad; the inspiration behind Adobe Comp CC; juggling multiple projects to stay fresh; choosing an extracurricular project; how design has changed in the past two years; how to watch TV; and more.
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Sarah Parmenter (@sazzy) and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss social media, the truth about Facebook Likes, growing your design business, getting bigger clients, sucking the joy out of web design, how the industry is changing, hair care for manly men, and more.
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Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest is Jen Simmons (@jensimmons) of The Web Ahead. The two long-time web designers discuss moving beyond cookie-cutter layouts on the web, the ins and outs of podcasting, designing a website, learning from your users, and Jen’s journey from theater to technology.
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Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest is web pioneer Jeff Veen (@veen), cofounder of Typekit and Adaptive Path, co-creator of Measuremap, author of The Art & Science of Web Design and Hot Wired Style, ex-Google, ex-Adobe, now with True Ventures capital investment firm. Jeff and Jeffrey discuss creating the tools our community uses to make the stuff the world consumes, agency versus in-house design, consulting design monetization versus product design monetization, parent hacks, mentoring, the early web design days of Debabelizer and using server-side push for animation (because animated GIFs didn’t exist yet), how companies get valuated, what it takes to make a thing (versus what it takes to scale it), speaking versus writing, research, empathy, and saying no to products that kill kittens.
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Jeffrey Zeldman's guest is web developer and long-time standards evangelist Aaron Gustafson (@AaronGustafson), author of Adaptive Web Design. The two web design and development veterans discuss web design then and now; why Flipboard's 60fps web launch is anti-web and anti-user; Genesis's "Land of Confusion" video, and other bad ideas from the 1980s; design versus art; the demise and sendoff of Web Standards Sherpa; how the web community differs from other creative communities; and the 2nd Edition of Aaron's book, coming from New Riders this year.
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Today’s guest is Jessica Alter (@jalter), Cofounder & Chief Connector of FounderDating, “a Linkedin for entrepreneurs.” Jessica and @zeldman discuss growing an online community while maintaining quality and avoiding spam and anti-patterns; how to become an advisor or cofounder; the biggest mistake budding entrepreneurs make; getting to your first customers; why the people side of things—experiential information—is more important than ever (and more important than fundraising); and how listeners can empower themselves to become entrepreneurs.
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Khoi Vinh (@khoi) is a web and graphic designer, blogger, and former design director for The New York Times, where he worked from January 2006 until July 2010. Prior to that, Khoi co-founded and was design director for Behavior, an NYC web design studio. He is the author of How They Got There: Interviews With Digital Designers About Their Careers (http://howtheygotthere.us) and Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design (New Riders, 2010), and was a leading proponent of bringing grid-based graphic design principles to web design in the mid-2000s. In 2011, Fast Company named him one of “The 50 Most Influential Designers in America."
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Jared Spool (@jmspool) of User Interface Engineering and Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman) discuss the goals and workings of Center Centre, a new school Jared cofounded with Dr Leslie Jensen Inman to create the next generation of industry-ready UX designers. Topics include "teaching students to learn," what schools can and can't do, working with partner companies, "Project Insanity," and designing a program to make students industry-ready.
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Author (“Sass For Web Designers”), designer, and Dribbble co-founder Dan Cederholm (@simplebits) sits down with Jeffrey Zeldman to discuss using tools and templates versus rolling your own design and code, whether web design was really simpler in the good old days, his favorite Dribbble features, community-building, empire-building, freelancing in the early days of Happy Cog, and the joys of the fretless banjo.
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Designers Mike Monteiro (author, “You’re My Favorite Client”) and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss why humility is expensive, how to reassure the client at every moment that you know what you’re doing, and how to design websites that look as good on Day 400 as they do on Day 1. Plus old age, unsung heroines of the early web, and a book for designers to give to their clients.
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Jeffrey Zeldman interviews creativity evangelist Denise Jacobs (@denisejacobs) of RawkTheWeb.
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In a fast-moving episode, designers Andy Budd and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss why clients spend more on toilet cleaning than design, honest pitching, the ins and outs of agile pricing, modular code libraries, selling web services instead of deliverables, the maturation of our industry since the mid-1990s, the value of reputation, design as a collaborative process, how and why agencies get invited to pitch, passion as studio marketing, our field's evolution from layout-making to strategic design thinking, and much more.
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Jason Santa Maria of Vox Media & A Book Apart discusses his new book, On Web Typography, with host Jeffrey Zeldman. The two designers discuss writing on trains, placing objects and playing with type, the new web designer, designing the Typekit logo, editorial design and Vox Media, three years and two editors, heavenly italics, type classification systems, Dieter Rams and "touch-ability," design as strategy, hitting it with the pretty stick, and more.
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Jeffrey Zeldman's guest is Justin Dauer, creative director at Nansen and co-founder of The Dead Pixel Society, dedicated to the lost art of pixel-by-pixel icon design. The present-day pixel artist refuses to die!
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Jeffrey Zeldman's guests are Sue Apfelbaum and Juliette Cezzar, co-authors & designers of Designing the Editorial Experience: A Primer for Print, Web, and Mobile.
Jeffrey Zeldman returns with the Big Web Show back on 5by5. For his first interview, he talks with Dan Benjamin about the evolution and changing importance of the web, 90's slang, and more.
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Scott Jehl and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss the picture element: a container for multiple images. Making the emerging W3C standard picture element work in today’s browsers. Polyfills and progressive enhancement. Responsible responsive design. Shim versus polyfill; srcset versus picture; the prefix wars. Balancing company projects and open source, community projects.
Picturefill is a responsive images polyfill approach that web designers and developers can use today.
Scott Jehl is a web designer and developer who works with the bright folks at Filament Group, where he creates websites and applications for a range of clients (including the 2012 responsive design of the Boston Globe). He is an active contributor to the open source community, frequently releasing ideas and projects on Github; a jQuery team member (most recently leading the development of the jQuery Mobile project); and the co-author of Designing With Progressive Enhancement (New Riders: 2010)
Tom Giannattasio, Founder/CEO of Macaw, “the superhot web design tool of the future”, joins Zeldman to discuss a paradigm shift: can we really draw semantic HTML and succinct CSS? How it works. Pixels, percentages, ems, or rems? Designing a design tool. How to quit your job. From Kickstarter to startup. Team building. Responsive design, responsive community.
Phillip Reyland and Roland Dubois, cofounders of Byte Dept., on creating products for clients instead of yourself. Four strategies to apply to every product: experience strategy, platform strategy, mobile strategy, and integration strategy. Rethinking the mobile bike app: using data to predict whether a bike will be there when you get to it. The experience layer versus the visual layer. Finding the right partner. Working with ad agencies. The difference between ideas and products, and how to explain it to your client. The wild world of wearables. And more.
Anil Dash and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss how government, media, and tech shape the world, and how we can influence them in turn. Our first meeting at SXSW in 2002. How selling CMS systems teaches you the dysfunction at media companies and organizations. Working for the music industry at the dawn of Napster. RFP-EZ. The early days of blogging. Designing websites for the government—the procurement problem. If we’re pouring all this time into social media, what do we want to get out of it? How big institutions work and how to have an impact on them. Living in “Joe’s Apartment.” Why, until recently, federal agencies that wanted a blog couldn’t use WordPress or Tumblr and how the State Dept got on Tumblr. Achieving empathy for institutions. Being more thoughtful about what I share and who I amplify on social media. The launch of Thinkup, and a special offer exclusively for Big Web Show listeners.
Mike Pick & Tim Murtaugh talk about creating a “Web at 25” website in five and a half weeks. Design, approval, and client focus. Working for geniuses. What we’d be doing if the web didn’t exist. Keeping the web open. What the W3C has in common with IndieWeb. The web today: more powerful, more empowering. Specialization and creativity. The effect of mobile on the digital divide.
Anna Debenham on Code For America, starting a web career at age 14, checking websites in game console browsers, producing 24 Ways, what comes after winning young developer of the year, and the delights of Spotted Dick and Victoria Sponge.
Anna is the author of Front-end Style Guides, creator of the Game Console Browsers website for developers, co-producer of 24 Ways, technical editor for A List Apart, and was Netmag’s Young Developer of the Year 2013.
Mat Marquis, chair of the W3C Responsive Images Community Group, sits down with Zeldman to discuss guidelines for responsive images in multi-device design. The two web designers discuss the history, theory, and multi-leveled challenge of responsive images, the path to standardization, and what browsers will do next.
The goal of a “responsive images” solution is to deliver images optimized for the end user’s context, rather than serving the largest potentially necessary image to everyone. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been quite so simple in practice as it is in theory.
Andy Clarke and Zeldman discuss 10 years of web design history, running a successful freelance design business, the importance of writing, approaches to public speaking, CSS3 easter eggs, growing your small design studio business, responsive web design, and more.
Nicole Sullivan talks about running CSS Conf, building scalable systems that won’t break, designing for speed and performance, learning Ruby, Object Oriented CSS, a CSS Style Guide, Type-o-matic, practical takeaways from stunt CSS, pairing as a work method, sexism and racism tests, and setting aside biases when selecting conference sessions.
Robin Berjon and Jeffrey Zeldman have a rational conversation about EME, DRM, the MPAA, and the W3C.
Sarah Parmenter talks about rethinking the designer’s role in the era of flat design; launching a design-led business—from concept to franchising in four months; misbehaving Fusion Drives, cracked Retina screens and other digital-age delights.
Sang Shin and David Yoon, co-creators of Been, discuss social bookmarking and the failure of cookies with host Jeffrey Zeldman.
Jason Fried, the notoriously private designer/writer/entrepreneur opens up about love, marketing, product design, and the secret behind The New York Times Bestseller list.
Michael Simmons, co-creator of the Fantastical app (#1 Apple Store app), talks with host Jeffrey Zeldman about artificial intelligence and machine learning, why iOS 7 is more than a skin job, the design of Fantastical (and Fantastical 2), the Apple ecosystem, sweating the details, developing a natural language parser, reinventing calendar software, why “you have to ship,” how to stay inspired on a long-term project, how to do a huge launch with no budget, what Microsoft was great at, Apple’s product design strategy, starting simple, human interface guidelines, and more.
Designer/developer Val Head @vlh and host Jeffrey Zeldman discuss the writing of A Pocket Guide to CSS Animations; the Web Design Day conference; running freelance projects and working as a hired gun; JavaScript and CSS animation compared; tales of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Buffalo and Toronto; the profession and people of web design; working with editors; what it takes to run a workshop; and more.
Type nerds, unite! Nick Sherman (The Font Bureau, Webtype, Fonts In Use, A List Apart) and Jeffrey Zeldman geek out on responsive type, 21st century hinting, typefaces designed from scratch for onscreen reading at small sizes, things you still can’t do on the web, EDID and other standards, type used in blaxploitation posters, punk rock, pizza, and more.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dribbble co-founder Dan Cederholm discuss fear of CSS pre-processors, growing the Dribbble design community, the craft of code, and Dan’s new book, Sass For Web Designers.
Designer, producer, and internet radio bon vivant Jeremy Fuksa and host Jeffrey Zeldman discuss advertising’s view of the web, the web’s view of advertising, and evolving design processes for our new screen and device overlords.
Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest is author, lecturer, studio co-founder, UX wiz, and web design pioneer Dan Brown. The two designers discuss collaboration strategies, the path from HTML to UX, growing a design studio business, Brian Eno and more.
Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai and Big Web Show host Jeffrey Zeldman discuss mobile apps and the quantified self; the genesis of bookmarking places; creating mobile UIs in the bad old days before smartphones; how Delicious’s bookmarking helped inspire Foursquare; what was really innovative about the iPhone from a mobile developer’s perspective (it’s not what you think); when to quit your job and start a product or service; where ideas come from; and what’s after Foursquare.
In a rollicking, laugh-filled hour, host Jeffrey Zeldman chats with internet radio pioneer, design author, and brand maven Debbie Millman @debbiemillman about broadcasting, writing, teaching, publishing, learning to be happy in your own skin, and the importance of early failure to long-term success and happiness.
Host Jeffrey Zeldman and guest Erika Hall (Just Enough Research, Mule Design) discuss why funding startups nobody needs is killing innovation, how designers can use research to stop bad ideas and find great ones, Russell Brand, and the secret history of Unsuck It.
Host Jeffrey Zeldman and guest Mike Monteiro (Design Is A Job, Mule Radio) discuss truthfulness and respect in the design business, the beauty of client services, The Big Web Show’s move to the Mule Radio Network, and the secret behind all great content products and applications.
Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Jake Archibald of Google Chrome about upcoming web caching standards, how the network connection is merely a layer of progressive enhancement and why you should build your app offline, communicating with non-developers, accessibility standards at BBC and The Guardian, the forking of Webkit, native versus web part 99, and why the much-linked article "Why Mobile Web Apps are Slow" proves no such thing.
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This episode is sponsored by Lynda.com.
Lea Verou (@LeaVerou) and Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman) discuss the creative process behind her CSS Secrets series and the book of the same name she is writing for O’Reilly; loving JavaScript and math; Lea’s professional path, beginning with coding Visual Basic at age twelve; using CSS to layout a print book about CSS; creating popular Open Source projects like Dabblet, Prism, and CSS3 Test; the case for progressive enhancement; earning a living doing your own thing; leaving her job at the W3C (announced today); and much more.
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This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by Lynda.com.
Mark Otto, creator of Bootstrap, is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest on Episode No. 93 of The Big Web Show ("everything web that matters").
Currently designing things at GitHub and previously at Twitter and ZURB, Mark may be found on the web at markdotto.com and on Twitter as @mdo.
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American designer Tash Wong and British designer Tom Harman are the co-founders of Coastermatic and Jeffrey Zeldman's guests in Episode No. 92 of The Big Web Show ("everything web that matters").
Tash and Tom recently resided in Brooklyn, NY and completed their MFAs in Interaction Design at New York's School of Visual Arts; they are now bound for Hawaii, where they will expand their web-based product empire. Coastermatic, their first joint product, converts your Instagram photos into stone coasters, and was conceived during their time at SVA. (More in the August 2, 2012 issue of Dwell.)
The three designers discuss UX, product, and business strategy; finding the right manufacturing and fulfillment partners; the division of labor in a small startup; and other juicy design and entrepreneurial topics.
Ryan and Tina Essmaker are Jeffrey Zeldman's guests for Episode No. 91 of The Big Web Show ("everything web that matters").
Ryan is a designer and the co-founder of The Great Discontent. By day he works with Crush + Lovely as head of products, and manages No Little Plans, The Great Discontent's parent company.
Tina is an illustrator, essayist, photographer, blogger, and the co-founder of The Great Discontent, an online journal of interviews focusing on creativity and risk, and No Little Plans, The Great Discontent's parent company. By day she manages community for Crush + Lovely and works as a freelance writer.
This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by A List Apart, the design magazine for people who make websites.
The amazing Paul Ford is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest in Episode No. 90 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”). In a fast-moving hour, the two long-time web architects discuss computer system emulators on the web, designing web archives, the value of context in software and literature, the new tribalism, the fallacy of history, buying records when you are 16, why getting to magic is more important than attaining perfection, the interconnectedness of software design and storytelling, how parenting twins facilitates A/B testing, and loads more.
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This episode is sponsored by An Event Apart.
A 28-year-old Rubyist, Skillsharer, storyteller, and entrepreneur, Avi founded @designerpages and NYC on Rails before creating The Flatiron School—a 12 week, full-time program designed to turn you into a web developer.
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Sponsored by aneventapart.com - the design conference for people who make websites.
Greg Storey (@Brilliantcrank) of Happy Cog and Airbag Industries is Jeffrey's guest in Episode No. 88 of The Big Web Show.
The two designers discuss the Austin tech and design scene; on-premises versus remote worker models; Greg's upcoming book (with Carl Smith) for people transitioning to web design; new methods of publishing on multiple platforms; modern web typography; and the inspiration behind the Digital PM Summit.
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Sponsored by An Event Apart (http://aneventapart.com).
Squarespace founder and CEO Anthony Casalena (@acasalena) is my guest in Episode No. 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 new e-commerce 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.
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This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by Shutterstock.com. Use offer code “BIGWEBSHOW3” to save 30% off any Shutterstock photo package.
Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Monkey Do studio co-founders Michael Pick and Tim Murtaugh, the design and development team behind the A List Apart and An Event Apart redesigns, HTML5 Reset, Edible City, and client projects including Scientific American, World Science Festival, and EconoMonitor.
Mike, Tim, and Jeffrey 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.
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Jeffrey talks with designer, developer, author, lecturer, and entrepreneur Dan Cederholm (Dribbble, Simplebits).
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Dalton Caldwell, CEO and co-founder of App.net, is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest in Episode No. 84 of The Big Web Show, sponsored by Happy Cog™.
We discuss Scott's latest thinking about “responsible responsive design,” whether responsive design is destroying creativity on the web, working with CSS flexbox, what’s new with the jQuery Mobile project, why people fear JavaScript and love jQuery, the size and management of Filament Group's multi-device test suite, the secret history of the jQuery logo, and much more.
This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by Lynda.com, an online learning company with more than 77,000 video tutorials that teach software, creative, and business skills. Try lynda.com free for 7 days by visiting lynda.com/bigwebshow.
Cindy Chastain, Creative Director & Experience Strategist at R/GA—plus actress, screenwriter, and freelance strategist—is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest in Episode No. 82 of The Big Web Show, sponsored by Happy Cog.
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In Episode No. 81 of The Big Web Show ("Everything Web That Matters") host Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Tina Roth Eisenberg, creator of swissmiss and tattly and co-founder of Creative Mornings and TeuxDeux. The two designers 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.
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This episode was sponsored by An Event Apart, the design conference for people who make websites. http://www.aneventapart.com
In Episode No. 80 of The Big Web Show ("Everything Web That Matters") host Jeffrey Zeldman interviews 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."
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In Episode No. 79 of The Big Web Show ("everything web that matters"), host Jeffrey Zeldman interviews 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.
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This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by Shutterstock.com. Get 30% off any package using discount code BIGWEBSHOW1.
In Episode No. 78 of The Big Web Show ("everything web that matters"), Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Margot Bloomstein, author of Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Engagement (Morgan Kaufmann, 2012), about her professional transition from design to content strategy; the vagaries of the consulting life; how mentoring and non-traditional academic backgrounds can fit into a web career; how to write a content strategy book for people who are not content strategists; and the beauties of Pittsburgh.
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This episode is sponsored by Shutterstock.com, where you’ll find over twenty million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. Get 30% off any package using discount code bigwebshow11.
Jeffrey Zeldman interviews returning guest Sarah Parmenter (.net magazine designer of the year) about designing an app for the homeless; the challenges of multi-device design; teaching HTML and CSS to young people; designing an extremely high-profile multi-platform, multiple magazine newsreader app; the ideal number of employees for a small design studio; Brooklyn vs. Leigh-on-Sea; steeping yourself in platforms you don't use personally; her role as a judge in an upcoming British TV series about design and technology; the increasing complexity of digital design; comping, collaborative, and presentational tools and processes; and more.
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This episode is sponsored by Shutterstock.com, where you’ll find over twenty million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. Get 30% off any package using discount code bigwebshow11.
Author of four classic web design texts (in 13 editions) Jennifer Robbins (@jenville) chats with Jeffrey Zeldman about her upcoming Artifact Conference for multi-device design; why sites are now systems, not pages; how style guides can function as a system design description tool; getting digital UX design into its natural habitat (hint: not a comp) sooner than later; what's new in web design and the 4th Edition of Learning Web Design; and more.
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This episode is sponsored by Shutterstock.com, where you’ll find over twenty million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. Start your search at Shutterstock.com to find that perfect image for your website, ad, publication or any other creative project.
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, discusses what it's like to be an internet entrepreneur with host Jeffrey Zeldman in Episode No. 75 of The Big Web Show.
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Today's episode is sponsored by An Event Apart, the design conference for people who make websites. aneventapart.com
In Episode No. 74 of The Big Web Show, Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks, CodePen, and ShopTalk about the path from employee to media maven, upcoming secret features for CodePen, coping with Retina images, finding sponsors, the success of his Kickstarter campaign, tee shirts for manly men, Twitter dramas about baseline grids, and lots more.
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This episode is sponsored by An Event Apart, the design conference for people who make websites. http://aneventapart.com
In Episode No. 73 of The Big Web Show, Jeffrey Zeldman interviews content strategist and author of "Content Everywhere" (Rosenfeld Media, 2012) Sara Wachter-Boettcher (@sara_ann_marie) about how practitioners can organize and structure content to maximize its value, longevity, and future-friendliness.
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This episode of The Big Web Show is brought to you by An Event Apart, the design conference for people who make websites. Dedicated to the proposition that the creators of great web experiences deserve a great learning experience, An Event Apart brings together twelve of the leading minds in web design for 3 days of non-stop inspiration and enlightenment. If you care about code as well as content, usability as well as design, An Event Apart is the conference for you. Find out more at aneventapart.com.
With the return of the Big Web Show, this week Jeffrey Zeldman speaks with web pioneer Derek Powazek, Founder and CEO of Cute-Fight, the online game for real-life pets and the people who love them
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Sponsored by A Book Apart
In this episode, Jeffrey speaks with founding partner and CEO of Readability, Richard Ziade.
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Sponsored by An Event Apart.
Jeffrey Zeldman speaks with Dan Benjamin about his career and life journey leading up to the creation of 5by5.
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In Episode No. 69 of The Big Web Show, Happy Cog creative director Chris Cashdollar (@ccashdollar) and Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman) discuss the joys and challenges of redesigning typography mega-site Fonts.com; nimble versus waterfall; process versus inspiration; running a creative department that is interactive in every sense of the word; the two sides of a design education (learning and teaching); fostering collaboration; and the transition from doodling eight-year-old to graphic design student to interactive creative director.
Christopher Cashdollar is a multi-disciplinary graphic designer with 12 years of interaction design experience. He is currently the Creative Director for Happy Cog Philadelphia, and an adjunct instructor for Drexel University's Westphal College of Media Arts and Design.
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Jeffrey Zeldman speaks with Tantek Çelik, web standards lead at Mozilla.
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If you are a subscriber to the video version of Big Web Show, please subscribe to the audio version of the podcast. We are no longer publishing a video version of the show.
In Big Web Show Episode No. 66, Jeffrey Zeldman interviews veteran web designer and publishing creative director David Sleight about how traditional publishers can transition to creating successful digital experiences, and the (mostly conceptual) obstacles they will have to overcome to do so.
Topics discussed in this episode include: why publishers alternately blame technology and treat it as a savior; the downside for magazine publishers of Apple's new retina display; why content thieves may be your best customers in waiting; content-focused responsive design versus printed page emulation; and much more.
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Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Tim Brown of Typekit and Nice Web Type on where we are with web fonts, real web type in real web context, using Dribbble to develop a tone of voice, how saving small snippets of other people's content can turn you into a blogger, Samantha Warren's Style Tiles, molten leading orbital content, pages versus chunks, the type-driven design, web font fallbacks, the connection between leading and font family, transitioning from university work to Typekit, and much more.
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Jeffrey Zeldman interviews front-end developer Jenn Lukas about how to tell if you're a designer or coder; in-house versus product development versus consulting; Girl Develop It, a code teaching activity for budding women web developers; the designer/developer collaboration; tabs or spaces; jumping on the SASS bandwagon; staying sane during #siteweek; maintaining an active roster of side projects; the importance of writing; and more.
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Sponsored by AppsFire and MailChimp.
Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Michael Surtees, founding partner and creative director at Gesture Theory, co-creator of Deckpub ("the future of publishing on iPad"), and author of Design notes. The two designers discuss managing a small, nimble design practice; getting clients; balancing client services work with product development and blogging; Michael's journey from employee to entrepreneur; avoiding static comps and wireframes; and much more.
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Sponsored by Rackspace and Squarespace.
Jeffrey Zeldman is joined by Kristofer Layon to discuss his book, Mobilizing Web Sites: Strategies for Mobile Web Implementation, and more.
Sponsored by Smile, Sourcebits, and Shopify.
Jeffrey Zeldman speaks with Mixel co-creator Khoi Vinh.
Sponsored by TinyLetter and Uncle Slam.
Jeffrey speaks with Josh Williams, co-founder of Gowalla.
Sponsored by Happy Cog Hosting, A Book Apart, and Sponsor 5by5.
Jeffrey Zeldman talks with Mike Monteiro of Mule Design.
Sponsored by TinyLetter and Reinvigorate.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin talk about lost offices, working from home, A Space Apart, A Book Apart's new books: Designing for Emotion and Mobile First, future friendly, police sirens, Steve Buscemi, and more.
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Sponsored by Sourcebits, Handelabra Studio, and Shopify.
Scott Jehl joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss the recent responsive resign of the Boston Globe, jQuery, the jQuery Mobile project, writing and speaking about web design, and his new book, Designing with Progressive Enhancement.
Sponsored by HelpSpot and Rackspace.
Faruk Ates joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss Modernizr, web and mobile design, Apple, and more.
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Sponsored by MailChimp and easyDNS.
Marissa Christina joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss her path as a web designer diagnosed with a debilitating vestibular disorder, and her blog Abledis.com, documenting living with a hidden disability.
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Sponsored by Field Notes, Audible, and thoughtbot.
Dan and Jeffrey talk about freelancing, project managers, setting up a new computer, and much more.
Sponsored by FreshBooks and Shopify.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benamin discuss the business of Web development.
Sponsored by MailChimp and Sound Studio 4.
Happy Cog president Greg Hoy joins Dan and Jeffrey to discuss business, design, and more.
Sponsored by Field Notes and iStockphoto.
Dan and Jeffrey discuss speaking, offices, distributed working, movies, scorpions, New York, a new AEA location announcement, and more.
Sponsored by OmniGroup: OmniFocus, Simplecasts, and Sponsor 5by5.
O’Reilly author, interviewer of rock stars, and longtime web and UX designer Jen Robbins joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss the web of present and past, book writing, print design, method, style, process, and more.
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Sponsored by iStockphoto and MailChimp.
Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss the intersection of community and popularity on the web and in terms of podcasts and social media.
Sponsored by Harvest and Sound Studio 4.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin discuss the state of the web, the evolution of Web Standards, the recent Boston AEA conference, and more.
Sponsored by Webtrends and MailChimp.
Alexa Andrzejewski joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to talk about Foodspotting and the path from user-centered design to the idea of seeing where Anthony Bourdain ate to a shipping product and the decision to take investment money on the way.
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Sponsored by Worldview and Intuit.
Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman are joined by Richard Rutter, co-founder of Fontdeck and Clearleft, to discuss typography on the web and more.
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Sponsored by Audible and MailChimp.
Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman are joined by Tim Murtaugh to talk about design, and the fallacy of developing for the "mobile" platform.
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Sponsored by Shopify and King of the Apps.
Sarah Parmenter joins Dan and Jeffrey to discuss putting yourself online and living in public, creepy stalkers, being star struck, accents and idioms, distinguishing your work and brand through simplifying, her iOS Workshops, and sexism and discrimination in the web business.
Sponsored by FreshBooks and MailChimp.
Krista Stevens of Automattic joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss great customer experiences and much more.
Sponsored by MailChimp.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin are joined by Filipe Fortes and Scott Kellum, the creators of Treesaver to talk a little about working on closed platforms at Microsoft, how working on a dynamic open publishing platform based on web technologies is a little like building a train while you’re riding it, weighing hand-crafted layouts and algorithmic layouts, and combating template explosion.
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Sponsored by Sourcebits and Audible.
Jeffrey is en route to his appearance at SXSW Interactive this week, so we took this opportunity to dig into the Big Web Show archives to assemble a taste test of some of the best guests and topics. Enjoy!
Sponsored by FreshBooks and Rackspace.
Designer Andy Rutledge joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss choosing clients, running a small company, and more.
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Sponsored by MailChimp and CodeConf 2011.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin are joined by Brian Alvey to discuss the early days of the web, balancing products and services, taking big meetings, what’s coming next for Content Management Systems, being a small publisher, and moving toward bigger platforms.
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Sponsored by Shopify and King of the Apps.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin are joined by Jason Snell of Macworld to discuss transitioning a print-focused publication into a web-focused publication, mixed models and “trying stuff,” ads and advertisers in multiple media, publishing a website, an App, and a Magazine, and why future of publishing means leaving things behind.
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Sponsored by MailChimp and Sourcebits.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin are joined by John Nack to discuss Photoshop and web design, crash reports, how pain points are opportunities, the Mac App Store, and the opportunity for mobile creative apps.
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Sponsored by Screens and Campaign Monitor.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin are joined by Mike Essl to discuss Mr. T, combining print and digital content, being Comic Book Guy in the age of eBooks, the past and future of proprietary platforms in publishing, and Mike's fully wearable shirt empire.
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Sponsored by Sound Studio 4 and MailChimp.
Jen Simmons joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss Drupal, the Drupal community, content management systems, design, and the future of publishing.
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Sponsored by Postmark and Rackspace.
Craig Mod joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss the decision to jump from freelance work to startup work, Craig’s experience traveling and writing the GF1 Fieldtest, how travel affects the work you do, and the multifaceted challenges and future of web publishing.
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Sponsored by Sourcebits and Campaign Monitor.
Dana Chisnell joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to talk about UX, testing, leveraging your expertise, New York City voting booth user experience design, and more.
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Sponsored by Zendesk and Shopify.
Mandy Brown joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss the value of support, the future of type on the web, font choice on reader platforms, what print publishers can learn from web publishers, why you’ve got to write, and why the future belongs to editors.
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Sponsored by MailChimp.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin are joined by Jim Coudal to discuss the phenomenon that is Layer Tennis, his presentation “secrets,” and firing clients to work for yourself.
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Sponsored by GitHub and Harvest.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin are joined by Jason Santa Maria and discuss mitigating the isolation of working in your underwear by reaching out to the community, avenues for creativity, struggling with the line between good enough and perfection, focus, why speaking and teaching are important, and why sometimes the distraction of working with other people is worth it.
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Sponsored by An Event Apart.
Matt Mullenweg joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss the creation and evolution of WordPress, the growth of Automattic, making money with open source, and more.
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Sponsored by MailChimp and Rackspace.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin talk about what they're thankful for, awards, visibility and public speaking (and why you should do it), Pub Standards, meetups (and why you should start or join one), and how to make a change.
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Andy Clarke joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to talk about his new book, Hardboiled Web Design, the evolution of the web, and the right way to design with HTML5 and CSS3.
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Gary Vaynerchuk joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to talk about humanizing business, his upcoming book The Thank You Economy, success and guilt, his new radio show, and his biggest mistake.
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Karen McGrane joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss putting publications online, the state of content management, careers in web design, running a design business, teaching UX and design, and more.
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Todd Dominey, creator of "SlideShowPro":http://slideshowpro.net, joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss making the transition from indy designer to employee to to business owner, his pioneering blog "What Do I Know":http://whatdoiknow.org, Flash, HTML5, and more.
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Paul Ford joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss the web, the future of publishing, microsites, branding , community, and more.
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Dan Cederholm joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss Dribbble, a vibrant design community for sharing screenshots of your work, Cork’d, the first social network for wine aficionados, his design style, inspiration, and more. A world-renowned web designer, author, speaker, and a giant in the field of CSS-based design, Dan is the founding principal of SimpleBits, a tiny creative studio (“We make websites and products”) based in Salem, Massachusetts.
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We're mixing it up for today’s episode of The Big Web Show. Instead of interviewing one or more amazing web innovators per our standard practice, Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman interview each other.
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Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin talk with Rich Ziade about how Arc90 manages the balance between product development and client services, and how to build a reputation when your client services agreements prevent you from having a public portfolio.
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Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin talk with Aarron Walter, lead user experience designer for MailChimp, about white-hat SEO strategies, user intent and content, usability, and more.
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Jeffrey and Dan talk with the legendary Rogert Black about web type, design templates, screen resolution, web publishing, responsive design, and more.
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Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benamin talk with Tracy Osborn about the ins and outs of networking when you're not well known; where ideas and inspiration come from; how to recognize and develop your best ideas and persuade others to believe in them; and more.
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Jeffrey and Dan talk with Sunni Brown, noted information designer, about visual communication and debunk the myth that doodling is a distraction.
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Tara Hunt, social media entrepreneur, author of The Whuffie Factor, cofounder of Citizen Agency, and one of Fast Company’s “women in tech — nine thought leaders who are changing our ideas about technology” talks with Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin about social media and much more.
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Jeffrey and Dan talk with Gowalla CEO Josh Williams about social media, being an entrepreneur, developer applications for the web and mobile, marketing a new business, and more.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin talk with Michael Nolan, a senior editor for Pearson’s New Riders and Peachpit imprints, focusing on web design and development. In this special hour of insights, we discuss how publishing really works, where it’s going, and how it will survive, plus plenty of stories about your favorite authors and designers, and tips on how to identify talent for those who are hiring, and how present yourself as a talented and desirable catch for those who are trying to boost their visibility and career prospects.
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Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman talk with "Andy McMillan":http://goodonpaper.com/, founder of "Build":http://buildconf.com/, an annual “hand-crafted web design conference” located in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and CSS godfather "Eric Meyer":http://meyerweb.com/, co-founder of "An Event Apart":http://aneventapart.com, the design conference for people who make websites.
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How do you scale CSS for millions of visitors or thousands of pages? Nicole Sullivan knows, and shares her insight, experience, and expertise in this in-depth discussion with Dan and Jeffrey.
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Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman talk with Jason Fried, CEO and co-founder of 37 Signals about changing an industry, collaborating, reducing distractions and interruptions, design, logos, usability, real and virtual offices, co-working, designing in the open, and more.
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Dan and Jeffrey talk with guest Ethan Marcotte. Topics include designing and coding for the likes of the Sundance Film Festival and New York Magazine, and the joys of responsive web design, working remotely, and more.
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Dan and Jeffrey talk with Whitney Hess about social networking, getting clients, and user experience design--from research to wireframes to testing and beyond.
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Dan and Jeffrey talk with special guest Jared Spool about usability testing in the real world, with practical advice for designers, UI engineers, and developers alike.
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Dan and Jeffrey chat with leading interaction designer "Luke Wroblewski":http://lukew.com about designing for the mobile space, and learn why the mobile experience for a web application or site should be designed before the PC version.
Luke Wroblewski is an internationally recognized digital product design leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 700 million people worldwide. He is the author of "Web Form Design":http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/webforms/ and "Functioning Form":http://www.lukew.com/ff/, and an extremely popular "speaker":http://www.lukew.com/presos/ at leading web design conferences. After long stints as Chief Design Architect at Yahoo! and Lead User Interface Designer of eBay Inc.'s platform team, he is currently Chief Design Officer and co-founder of a stealth start-up.
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Dan and Jeffrey talk with special guest Liz Danzico ("@bobulate":http://twitter.com/bobulate), author of "Bobulate":http://bobulate.com, columnist for Interactions Magazine, former editor of Boxes and Arrows, former director of experience strategy for AIGA, former IA director at Barnes & Noble, and chairperson of the "MFA in Interaction Design program":http://interactiondesign.sva.edu/ at New York’s School of Visual Arts. They discuss web and interaction design education, user experience design, how to structure a program and teach a class, acquiring and editing content, and much more.
Dan and Jeffrey talk in-depth about content strategy on the web with Kristina Halvorson, CEO, Brain Traffic and author, Content Strategy for the Web (New Riders, 2010), and Erin Kissane, content strategist with Happy Cog, and author of Incisive.nu.
Melissa Pierce’s film, "Life in Perpetual Beta":http://lifeinperpetualbeta.com/ asks the question, "is the planned life worth living?" and sketches an answer via interviews with the likes of Baratunde Thuston, Irina Slutsky, and Biz Stone. Watch us turn the tables on the interviewer (now our interviewee) to find out how a homemaker with no filmmaking experience became the darling of the Chicago Independent Film Festival.
Dan and Jeffrey talk with "Jeremy Keith":http://adactio.com, designer, writer, speaker, and author of "HTML5 for Web Designers":http://books.alistapart.com, a new book coming out in June of 2010. They discuss the goals and inspiration behind the book, as well as what HTML5 means for both web creators and those who consume the web, covering topics that range from structure to accessibility and implementation.
Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin grill Ethan Dunham of "Fontspring":http://www.fontspring.com/ and "Font Squirrel":http://fontsquirrel.com and "Jeffrey Veen":http://veen.com of "Typekit":http://typekit.com (and other sites, too numerous to name) about one of your favorite subjects, "real fonts on your website" in this, our inaugural episode.