Category: Web Design History

  • In search of a digital town square

    In search of a digital town square

    Ever since an infantile fascist billionaire (hereafter, the IFB) decided to turn Twitter over to the racially hostile anti-science set, folks who previously used that network daily to discuss and amplify topics they cared about…

  • Fly, my designers, fly!

    Fly, my designers, fly!

    Designers can either become drivers of business within their organizations, or they can create the businesses they want to drive. We’re entering an era of design entrepreneurship, in which some designers are realizing that they’re…

  • The Next Generation of Web Layouts

    The Next Generation of Web Layouts

    Who will design the next generation of readable, writerly web layouts? Layouts for sites that are mostly writing. Designed by people who love writing. Where text can be engaging even if it isn’t offset by…

  • He Built This City: The Return of Glenn Davis

    He Built This City: The Return of Glenn Davis

    You may not know his name, but he played a huge part in creating the web you take for granted today. And he’s back—kind of.

  • My Night With Essl

    My Night With Essl

    Herewith, a scene from last night’s interview with legendary web & book designer (and Dean of The Cooper Union School of Art) Mike Essl, who shared his portfolio, career highlights, early web design history, and…

  • Saving Your Web Workflows with Prototyping

    Saving Your Web Workflows with Prototyping

    Our static tools and linear workflows aren’t the right fit for the flexible, diverse reality of today’s Web. Making prototyping a central element of your workflows will radically change how you approach problem solution and…

  • The Web We Lost: Volume One

    The Web We Lost: Volume One

    I don’t miss Flash but I sure miss this level of creativity and experimentation on the web. As today’s “The Web We’ve Lost” exercise for designers, please take a look back at Matt Owens’s historic…

  • The Web We Lost: Luke Dorny Redesign

    The Web We Lost: Luke Dorny Redesign

    Like 90s hip-hop, The Web We Lost™ retains a near-mystical hold on the hearts and minds of those who were lucky enough to be part of it. Luke Dorny’s recent, lovingly hand-carved redesign of his…

  • Look back in anchor tags

    Look back in anchor tags

    NEW YEARS bring thoughts of old years, and, to a designer and veteran “blogger,” thoughts of old work. My personal site, begun in 1994, was many things: an interview zine (my first web client, Donald Buckley, named it: 15…

  • A Dao of Responsive Liquid

    A Dao of Responsive Liquid

    A liquid page will resize to fit whatever size browser window (within reason) that the user has available. … the real goal in building a website is to provide the user with a seamless interface to…

  • In Defense of Font Size Widgets

    In Defense of Font Size Widgets

    Most of the sites we’ve designed in the past few years have not had a text size widget, but I believe this was due to our privileged assumptions and biases, and not to the reality…

  • Big Web Show ? 150: Giant Paradigm Shifts and Other Delights With Brad Frost

    Big Web Show ? 150: Giant Paradigm Shifts and Other Delights With Brad Frost

    BOY, was this show overdue. For the first time ever on The Big Web Show, I chat with my friend, front-end developer extraordinaire Brad Frost, author of the spanking new book, Atomic Design. We have…

  • This year more than ever, Blue Beanie Day matters

    This year more than ever, Blue Beanie Day matters

    AT FIRST GLANCE, November 2016 has bigger fish to fry than a small, cult holiday celebrated by web developers and designers. Each day since November 8, 2016 has brought new, and, to some of us,…

  • Private Parts: unlikely advocate fights for online privacy, anonymity

    Private Parts: unlikely advocate fights for online privacy, anonymity

    MESMERIZED as we have been by the spectacle of the flaming garbage scow of U.S. election news, it would have been easy to miss this other narrative. But in the past few days, just as…

  • Ten Years Ago on the Web

    Ten Years Ago on the Web

    2006 DOESN’T seem forever ago until I remember that we were tracking IE7 bugs, worrying about the RSS feed validator, and viewing Drupal as an accessibility-and-web-standards-positive platform, at the time. Pundits were claiming bad design was good for the web…