King of Web Stan­dardsBloomberg Busi­ness­week

Whether its mea­sured in the thou­sands of design­ers and devel­op­ers world­wide who cred­it him with launch­ing (or sav­ing) their careers, or judged by the medi­ums trans­for­ma­tion from such short­sight­ed solu­tions as table lay­outs and Flash to the HTML and CSS seman­tics, struc­ture, and acces­si­bil­i­ty that make our mod­ern, mobile, mul­ti-device web pos­si­ble, no sin­gle prac­ti­tion­er has had a greater impact on the his­to­ry and prac­tice of web design than stu­dio founder Jef­frey Zeld­man.

Design­ing and build­ing client web­sites, blog­ging, teach­ing, and cre­at­ing inde­pen­dent con­tent since 1995, Jef­frey returned to his roots in 2016, found­ing studio.zeldman to work more close­ly with clients whose busi­ness­es and prod­ucts make a difference.

Jef­freys pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ry as a design­er, author, edu­ca­tor, pub­lish­er, and ser­i­al entre­pre­neur mir­rors that of the medi­um he loves.

In 1998, at the height of the Brows­er Wars, he co-found­ed The Web Stan­dards Project to bring HTML, CSS, and JavaScript stan­dards to our browsers. That same year he found­ed A List Apart, a lead­ing jour­nal of web design­fa­mous for intro­duc­ing dozens of rev­o­lu­tion­ary inno­va­tions to the field (includ­ing respon­sive web design, web-cen­tric lay­out, Slid­ing Doors, elas­tic design, Faux Columns, CSS sprites) and for cham­pi­oning best prac­tices (such as CSS lay­out, seman­tic markup, pro­gres­sive enhance­ment, con­tent strat­e­gy, acces­si­bil­i­ty, and inclu­sive design).

Jef­frey has writ­ten two books, most notably the foun­da­tion­al web stan­dards text, Design­ing With Web Stan­dardscur­rent­ly in a 3rd edi­tion co-authored with Ethan Mar­cotte. More than 85 uni­ver­si­tiesin­clud­ing New York Uni­ver­si­ty, UCLA, Dart­mouth, and Brigham Younglist it as required read­ing, and it has been trans­lat­ed into 15 languages.

Jef­frey found­ed his first design stu­dio, Hap­py Cog (named agency of the year in the 2010 net awards) in 1999, and in 2005, co-found­ed the mul­ti-city user expe­ri­ence and inter­ac­tion design con­fer­ence An Event Apart with Eric Mey­er. With Jason San­ta Maria and Mandy Brown, Jef­frey also co-found­ed A Book Apartan inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing house cre­at­ing brief books for web and inter­ac­tion design­ers, where he serves as pub­lish­er. A Book Aparts titles, includ­ing Mobile First by Luke Wrob­lews­ki, Design is a Job by Mike Mon­teiro, Design For Real Life by Sara Wachter-Boettch­er and Eric Mey­er, and Respon­sive Web Design by Ethan Mar­cotte have been pro­found­ly influential.

Jef­frey is a found­ing fac­ul­ty mem­ber on the MFA, Inter­ac­tion Design pro­gram at School of Visu­al Arts, New York, where, one night a week dur­ing the Spring Term, he pre­pares MFA can­di­dates to go out into the world upon receipt of their degree. He co-found­ed and hosts the inter­net radio pro­gram The Big Web Show (Every­thing Web That Mat­ters), which has twice been named Pod­cast of the Year by net mag­a­zine. In 2012, Jef­frey was the first human induct­ed into the SXSW Inter­ac­tive Hall of Fame. He lives in New York with his daugh­ter, two cats, and four hamsters.

Jef­frey spends the major­i­ty of his time at studio.zeldman, iden­ti­fy­ing chal­leng­ing projects and work­ing on them with his small, hand-picked team of perfectionists.

Of Note

Design­ing With Web Stan­dards 3rd Edi­tion, by Jef­frey Zeld­man with Ethan Marcotte,
New Rid­ers, Octo­ber 25, 2009

Tak­ing Your Tal­ent to the Web: a Guide for the Tran­si­tion­ing Design­er, by Jef­frey Zeldman,
New Rid­ers, May 18, 2001

Jef­frey Zeld­man: 20 years of Web Design and Community
lynda.com, (doc­u­men­tary)

In the Stu­dio With Jef­frey Zeld­manPost­light broad­cast, Novem­ber 1, 2016

What Comes Next is the Future (doc­u­men­tary by Rick Grif­fin), 2016

To Save Real News, Decem­ber 2016

In Defense of Font Size Wid­gets, Decem­ber 14, 2016

Jef­frey Zeld­man Shares His Advice for Aspir­ing Free­lance Web Design­ers, video and arti­cle, Shopi­fy blog, Decem­ber 2, 2016

This Year More Than Ever, Blue Beanie Day Mat­ters, Novem­ber 22, 2016

20 Expert Strate­gies to Help Over­come Cre­ative Blocks Shopi­fy Blog, Sep­tem­ber 28, 2016

Jef­frey Zeld­man on agency life, the chang­ing web and why he had to get back to his roots ,
Cre­ative Boom, June 24, 2016

Has Design Become Too Hard? | Jef­frey Zeld­man in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Arts,
June 2, 2016

User Defend­ers: Stay Enchant­ed with Jef­frey Zeld­man (Part II),
June 1, 2016

User Defend­ers: Stay Enchant­ed with Jef­frey Zeld­man (Part I),
May 9, 2016

The Web Ahead ? 115: Pre­dict­ing the future with Rachel Andrew, Jen Sim­mons, Eric Mey­er, and Jef­frey Zeldman
April 29, 2016

Non Break­ing Space Show ? 64: Jef­frey Zeld­man Web Design His­to­ry,
Jan­u­ary 26, 2016

Ask Dr. WebLive, 60-minute audi­ence Q&A video with Zeld­man and Sarah Par­menter,
A List Apart, Decem­ber 2, 2015

Look­ing for Love: Stand­ing Out from the Crowd of Web Job Seek­ers (Ask Dr Web),
A List Apart, Novem­ber 18, 2015

Ad Block­ing and the Future of the Web,
The Observ­er, Sep­tem­ber 23, 2015

If Ever I Should Leave You: Job Hunt­ing For Web Design­ers and Devel­op­ers by Jef­frey Zeld­man,
A List Apart, July 30, 2015

Pub­lish­ing Ver­sus Per­for­mance: Our Strug­gle for the Soul of the Web by Jef­frey Zeld­man,
Medi­um, July 29, 2015

Web Stan­dards and Respon­sive Typog­ra­phyan Inter­view with Jef­frey Zeld­man (tran­scrip­tion and 24-hour web type design of live inter­view con­duct­ed by Nick Sher­man),
Typetester.org, June 14, 2015

Ask Dr Web: No Good Can Come of Bad Code, by Jef­frey Zeld­man,
A List Apart, June 4, 2015

Whos Afraid of the Big Bad Medi­um? by Jef­frey Zeld­man,
Medi­um, April 20, 2015

Design­ing the Web with Jef­frey Zeld­man,
The Web Ahead, March 18, 2015

Jesus and the Uber Dri­ver by Jef­frey Zeld­man,
Medi­um, March 3, 2015

The FWA: A Week in the Life of Jef­frey Zeld­man,
Feb­ru­ary 24, 2015

Ask Dr Web ? 3: The Love You Make by Jef­frey Zeldman,
A List Apart, Feb­ru­ary 12, 2015

A Hol­i­day Wish by Jef­frey Zeldman,
24 ways, Decem­ber 18, 2014

Ask Dr Web ? 2: Help, My Port­fo­lio Sucks! by Jef­frey Zeldman,
A List Apart, Octo­ber 30, 2014

Jef­frey Zeld­man: The Job Is Nev­er Done, by Ted­dy Rhys,
Kon­tent, Octo­ber 7, 2014

Ask Dr Web: The Doc­tor Is In, by Jef­frey Zeldman,
A List Apart, June 26, 2014

A His­to­ry Les­son Apart with Jef­frey Zeld­man,
April 24, 2014

Jef­frey Zeld­man Inter­view, The Great Dis­con­tent,
August 3, 2012

What Comes Next Is the Future
(doc­u­men­tary in progress), April 2014

Why Design­ers need to Craft Words Not Pix­els: William Chan­ner inter­views Jef­frey Zeld­man,
Sep­tem­ber 18, 2013

The Gen­tly Mad Pod­cast: Jef­frey Zeld­man,
Sep­tem­ber 19, 2013

An Event Apart Video: Jef­frey Zeld­man Con­tent First,
(video), July 25, 2013

Indus­try-Lead­ing Design­ers Share Their Cur­rent Top 3 Favorite Type­faces,
April 29, 2014

Jef­frey Zeld­man: Ten Com­mand­ments of Mod­ern Web Design,
Adobe.com, May 2013

Pod­cast 001, Part 1 Gary Lock­wood inter­views Jef­frey Zeld­man,
Octo­ber 16, 2012

Devs respond to Opera WebKit switch, Craig Grannell,
.net Mag­a­zine, Feb­ru­ary 13, 2013

Large Type: One Web Design­er Puts Con­tent First in a Big Way by Antho­ny Wing Kosner,
Forbes, May 20, 2012

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