About

L. Jeffrey Zeldman

Photo of Jeffrey Zeldman

“King of Web Standards”—Bloomberg Businessweek.

Online since May of 1995, Zeldman on Web Design is the personal site of designer, writer, and publisher Jeffrey Zeldman. “Jeffrey Zeldman Presents the Daily Report” is one of the oldest continuously published personal sites on the web, and a registered periodical: ISSN No. 1534-0309.

JEFFREY ZELDMAN publishes A List Apart “for people who make websites,” a leading journal of web and interaction design thought, and co-founded the multi-city user experience design conference An Event Apart with Eric Meyer. Since February 2019, Jeffrey has served as the Director of Employer Brand at Automattic, Inc.—the people behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, and other fine open-source web software.

Jeffrey has written two books, notably the foundational web standards text, Designing With Web Standards, currently in a 3rd Edition coauthored with Ethan Marcotte. It has been translated into 15 languages, including (for the last edition) Italian, Chinese, Hungarian, Polish and Portuguese. The book, together with The Web Standards Project, which Jeffrey co-founded with Glenn Davis and George Olsen in 1998, and led from 1999–2003, is credited with converting the web design industry from tag soup and Flash to semantics and accessibility via the correct use of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. His first book, Taking Your Talent to The Web, is now available as a free download and website.

Jeffrey co-founded and publishes A Book Apart (“brief books for people who make websites”), a small press with a big impact in the field of web and digital design and UX. Among titles published by A Book Apart during its first years of operation are Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte and Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski. The complete titles, comprising approximately 50 books as of this writing, form a comprehensive canon of the industry’s most important innovations and best practices.

Jeffrey was a founding faculty member in the MFA, Interaction Design program at School of Visual Arts, New York, where he taught for ten years, and is the founder and host of the internet radio program The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”), twice named Podcast of the Year by .net Magazine. Jeffrey serves on the Advisory Boards of Automattic, the SXSW Interactive Festival, and Readability, and is the Founder Emeritus of Happy Cog™, a digital design studio in New York.

In 2012, Jeffrey Zeldman was the first designer inducted in the SXSW Interactive Hall of Fame. He tweets prolifically at @zeldman, is the subject of a lynda.com documentary, and has blogged and shared web design concepts and advocated user- and content-focused design techniques at Jeffrey Zeldman Presents since 1995.

Jeffrey wrote this text in the third person. Additional biographical information not written by JZ himself may be found at Wikipedia.

Jeffrey Zeldman, self-portrait in NYC subway

Books Written

(For books published, see A Book Apart)

Articles and Interviews

Outdated Press Photos

PRESS PHOTOS may be freely used under a Creative Commons license, but must be credited to the respective photographers.

Jeffrey Zeldman, photographed by John Morrison

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Jeffrey Zeldman, photographed by Tony Quartarolo

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Pardon My Archives

HERE be ancient zeldman.com content in its original format.

  • Fifteen Minutes: Video and audio interviews with movie stars and web designers, in original cheesy format, 1996–1999
  • The Ad Graveyard: Real ads that almost ran, 1995–1998.
  • Pardon My Icons: Unusual icons for your desktop or website. 1995–1998.
  • Gifplex: Early animated GIF experiment, 1995.
  • Ask Dr Web: A complete guide to web design, 1990s style. 1995–1998. REMOVED because it continued to get traffic long after it was obsolete.
  • Waterbox: For your listening pleasure, electronica by your humble narrator. In RealAudio! Need to remaster.
  • If The Great Movies Had Been Websites: What if Orson Welles had kept a web diary? 1999
  • Mr. Jenkins’s Last Martini: The web’s first alcoholic haiku contest. REMOVED.
  • Lawrence Welk, Postmodernist: We come to praise him. 1995
  • Letter From Istanbul: Rocking the cradle of civilization. Unfinished travelogue. 1998.
  • Linker’s Delight: Obsolete banners, from back when we did that sort of thing.
  • Wallpaper: Dress that desktop for success. 1997.

Credits

ZELDMAN.COM is powered by WordPress and produced in NYC, USA. Written by L. Jeffrey Zeldman, who also created the site’s first 20 or 30 designs. Original WordPress implementation by Noël Jackson. The current site design is Twenty Twenty, an accessible, free theme from WordPress.org, which I’ve lightly grilled and served with a nice Chianti.