Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen

The 3 Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen With the rise of Flash and CSS in 1997, three web design philosophies emerged. David Siegel advocated for 'hacks', Jakob Nielsen kept it simple, while Jeffrey Zeldman combined flair with usability. My well-thumbed copies of three classic web design books: 'Creating Killer Web Sites' by David Siegel (1996-97), 'Taking your Talent to the Web' by Jeffrey Zeldman (2001), and 'Designing Web Usability' by Jakob Nielsen (1999). Like many of the first wave of web designers, Jeffrey Zeldman — who turned 42 in early 1997 — had begun his career in a completely different profession. He’d started out as an aspiring fiction author, briefly worked as a journalist, tried his hand as a touring musician, and then spent ten years in the advertising business. “Writing billboards and coming up with quick visuals was good training for the web because you have to communicate something instantly,” he later said in an interview. It was the rise of mul ... Read full article.