Design


Content precedes design

Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.

ALA 258: art of community, science of design

What does it take to build an online community like Flickr’s? And how can we tell if interface design conventions we take for granted actually help or hurt users? In Issue No. 258 of A List Apart, for people who make websites, George Oates, a key member of the core team that shaped the Flickr [...]

An e-mail from Chip Kidd

I’ll never forget the day Chip Kidd sent me an e-mail. Chip Kidd, author of The Cheese Monkeys, the book that does for design school what Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust did for Hollywood.
I wrote about Chip Kidd’s work and he sent me a polite e-mail in response. He called me “Mr Zeldman.” [...]

Stick out your tongue

While employed at a famous New York advertising agency twenty years ago, a partner and I created a TV commercial touting an over-the-counter medicine client’s revolutionary new cold and flu remedy for young children.
Only when the shooting and shouting was over did we learn that the product did not, in fact, exist.
The commercial [...]

The vanishing personal site

Our personal sites, once our primary points of online presence, are becoming sock drawers for displaced first-person content. We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via comments. Did I say we are witnessing the traditional [...]

An Event Apart New Orleans: thank you and adieu

An Event Apart New Orleans is over, but the memories and photos linger on.
Maybe it was the people. Maybe it was the extraordinary speakers. Or the staff, who made everything hum and shine. Or the keenly focused film crew. Maybe it was the sponsors. Or that crazy party. Maybe it was just the king [...]

ALA 257: the why and how of Ruby on Rails

Issue No. 257 of A List Apart, for people who make websites, is about the why and how of Ruby on Rails. Learn how to get started with Dan Benjamin, and find out from Michael Slater if your web app hits the “RoR sweet spot.”

The feed is gone

For a busy blogger, some content creation shortcuts work, and others don’t.

A show about nothing, part 11

Adjusting position of dirty glasses and plates in dishwasher. “Geometry or physics?” I asked. “Generalized anxiety disorder,” she replied.

Looks good to Mies

The Seed Conference, held in Crown Hall (the “Cathedral of Modernism” designed by Mies van der Rohe) is a one-day event about design, entrepreneurship, and inspiration. Speakers include Jason Fried (37signals), Jim Coudal (Coudal Partners), Carlos Segura (T26), Jake and Jeffrey (Threadless), Edward Lifson (NPR, Harvard), and Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV).