Jeffrey Zeldman Quotes

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.

The best way to engage honestly with the marketplace via Twitter is to never use the words "engage," "honestly," or "marketplace."

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.'

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.

Don't worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.

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.

Content informs design; design without content is decoration.

Good Web design is about the character of the content, not the character of the designer.

Comments are proof most people don't read the articles.

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.

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.

Test everything, including assumptions

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.

Real web designers write code. Always have, always will.

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