Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration. Jeffrey Zeldman More Quotes by Jeffrey Zeldman More Quotes From Jeffrey Zeldman Don't worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop. Jeffrey Zeldman starting-up business success Good Web design is about the character of the content, not the character of the designer. Jeffrey Zeldman designer design character Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity. Jeffrey Zeldman design voice identity Content informs design; design without content is decoration. Jeffrey Zeldman design decoration Usability is like love. You have to care, you have to listen, and you have to be willing to change. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s where growth and forgiveness come in. Jeffrey Zeldman like-love mistake love-you Real web designers write code. Always have, always will. Jeffrey Zeldman design real writing The best way to engage honestly with the marketplace via Twitter is to never use the words "engage," "honestly," or "marketplace." Jeffrey Zeldman business use way Good information architecture enables people to find and do what they came for. Great information architecture takes find out of the equation: the site behaves as the visitor expects. Poor or missing information architecture neuters content, design, and programming and devalues the site for its owners as well as the audience it was created to serve. It’s like a film with no director. The actors may be good, the sets may be lovely, but audiences will leave soon after the opening credits. Jeffrey Zeldman design missing people Many young web designers view their craft the way I used to view pop culture. It's cool or it's crap. They mistake Style for Design, when the two things are not the same at all. Design communicates on every level. It tells you where you are, cues you to what you can do, and facilitates the doing. Style is tautological; it communicates stylishness. In visual terms, style is an aspect of design; in commercial terms, style can communicate brand attributes. Jeffrey Zeldman views mistake two Test everything, including assumptions Jeffrey Zeldman assumption consciousness tests Whether the task is writing, design, or hanging a picture straight, it is obvious that we do our best work when healthy, rested, refreshed, alert, and eager to do the job for its own sake. Jeffrey Zeldman design writing jobs When I see Facebook, I feel like Howlin' Wolf must have felt when he first heard Elvis. 'They finally taught a white boy to do this.' Jeffrey Zeldman white boys firsts That's the rational premise behind my spending hours of billable time adjusting my Facebook preferences. The real reason, of course, for all this stuff, is that it provides a way to blow off work you should be doing, while creating the illusion that you are achieving something. Jeffrey Zeldman creating real blow Comments are proof most people don't read the articles. Jeffrey Zeldman articles proof people When we launched The Deck, I hoped other networks would take inspiration from it and figure out how to increase engagement while minimizing clutter. I even tried to sell my studio's media clients on the notion of fewer, better-priced, better-targeted ads. Jeffrey Zeldman how clients media inspiration The web's strength lies precisely in its unique position as the world's first universal platform. Jeffrey Zeldman position strength unique world Business owners should think of designers as architects, not decorators. Jeffrey Zeldman architects think business should I'd like to be able to design as easily as if I was using Photoshop. I'd like to be able to create a multicolumn layout and control source order without having to do advanced mathematics or hire Eric Meyer or Dan Cederholm to figure out the CSS, because I can't. Jeffrey Zeldman control create mathematics design Validation is easy - you run your site through a validator, and it's either valid or it isn't. The rest of the stuff, such as whether my logo or the biggest headline should be the h1 in my HTML, isn't so easy and is subject to interpretation. Jeffrey Zeldman your rest you easy I wanted to be a writer and an artist. Learning to type as quickly as I could think was a needed skill and part of my long self-directed apprenticeship. Jeffrey Zeldman skill think learning long
