zeldman

@zeldman.bsky.social

11728 Followers 5702 Following

“King of Web Standards”—Businessweek. OG web designer/blogger. Automattician. zeldman.com + alistapart.com. Wrote “Designing With Web Standards.” Founded Happy Cog studio. Taught MFA IXD at SVA NYC. Co-founded A Book Apart & An Event Apart (RIP).

The Exorcist
Stephen Miller
Still from Charles Chaplin’s 1940 film, “The Great Dictator.” Chaplin as the fanatical dictator gives an incoherent speech full of rage and lies. In a cartoonish moment not shown here, the stench of the dictator’s ideas causes the microphones to bend backwards, as if to escape the sound of his voice.
Teenage Chicago police officer Carl Gallagher from “Shameless.”
Old man under a blanket. There’s a thermometer in his mouth. Title accurately reads “Sick Day.”
Stylized caricature of James Brown playing a drum set. The title alludes to "Funk Drummer," the most frequently sampled beat in all of hip-hop. There are stars floating around the drum set, possibly an allusion to Brown's album "Star Time."
Artist unknown. A woman emerges from a sea of her own tears, her hands cradling a tiny, dead baby elephant. Red flowers grow from the wee elephant corpse.
Snow White (left) and Jeffrey (right). An Event Apart lunchbox is visible in the background. Jeffrey is wearing headphones.
Ornamental doorway, office building, NoMad, Manhattan. A winged cherub flanks the street number on the left; presumably there’s another one flanking the street number on the right—one which can’t be seen because of the angle. The number “45” appears in large, chrome letters in the center of the door frame. There is ornamental curved masonry work throughout the image.
Jeffrey Zeldman "wearing" a digital rainbow wig while seated in a digital mountain clearing. His shirt celebrates The Marx Brothers. A star-shaped digital beauty mark adorns his ancient cheek. The image is mirrored.
LukeW dancing ballet.
Last four films watched: Stranger on the Third Floor (proto-noir), Valley of the Kings (the film that gave Spielberg and Lucas the idea for Indiana Jones), Armored Car Robbery (solid low-budget noir), and The Scarlet Empress (Dietrich vehicle with sensational Von Stroheim visuals).
Debbie Harry in the 1970s, posing for Chris Stein. Debbie wears a Vultures tee shirt, studded leather belt, and leather bikini bottom. A prop spider crawls down the wall behind her, and her shadow looms large. The mise-en-scene suggests horror movies and film noir.
Poorly built model of Trump’s fascist arch, out of scale and lacking detail—like the papier-mache Stonehenge in “This is Spinal Tap”—sits unvisited at Trump’s celebration of himself, the woefully under-attended “American State Fair.” Three men in uniform sit in folding chairs at the base of the el-cheapo arch mockup, no doubt protecting it from possible Antifa attack. The stupidity, it burns.
Blog layout, state-of-the-art as of 28 July 2004. Besides losing the sidebar and allowing the content to flow to fit the device, improvements you’d make today include providing usable visual contrast. This low-contrast stuff was terrible for accessibility, but it felt beautiful for a moment as we clawed our way out of the Stone Age of web design.
Jeffrey Zeldman sits before a bookshelf backdrop during a Zoom call. His hair, mustache and beard are salt-and-pepper (mostly salt). His eyes, as always, are a vague color green (but outdoors they are closer to blue).
Knicks win, hoist trophy.
Front cover of CD: “Lumpy Gravy” by Frank Zappa.
On a Manhattan roof deck, a man seated at a table reads a book. The day is bright and sunny. The scene was photographed through a window on the landing of the staircase that leads up to the roof. The United Nations Secretariat is visible in the near distance.
We Two Boys Together Clinging Date: 1961 Medium: Painting, Oil Artwork details: 121.9 x 152.4cm
Jasper (left) and Snow White (right) – two of my cats enjoying cozy chaos.
The immortal Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges relaxes with his cat. Photographed in 1966 for the Paris Review interview. I attended a reading he gave at my university. It was like seeing Milton.
Window view from the Automattic NoHo Space in NYC. 19th Century buildings and water towers under an overcast sky.
Marilyn Monroe looking dreamy. Yesterday would have been her one hundredth birthday.
Record cover, "She's a Rainbow" by The Rolling Stones.
Jeffrey Zeldman relaxes on a park bench on a sunny Sunday in NYC. He is a short man with bushy white hair, beard, and mustache. He wears dark glasses to protect his aging, pale eyes.
Sultan Mehmed II at the gates of Constantinople (Istanbul) painted in 1903 by the Italian painter Fausto Zonaro. (Photo via National Palaces Painting Museum of Istanbul)
The proposed Trump $250 US currency bill. Featuring His Nibs’s hate-filled mugshot.
Political poster: Kennedy For President – Leadership for the 60’s
Apartment building rooftop deck, looking west into Midtown Manhattan.
Row upon row of crosses quietly testify to sacrifice in a military graveyard. This one is housed overseas and maintained by the U.S. Air Force.
Three battle-weary American soldiers are painted emerging from (or passing) a US Army truck. The men’s faces are grimy and bearded. Behind them stands an old woman wearing a full-length mink coat. She watches the soldiers, a spectator to war.
Snow White, a fluffy white cat with a pink nose and yellow eyes, sits upright on a bed. One of her rear paws rests on an iPad. Aset of headphones and a Kleenex tissue box are also visible. The tissues are for allergies, you sickos. "I Wake Up Sneezing" would be the title of my film noir.
Brad Pitt prepares to shoot Kevin Spacey in the climax of the David Fincher film, “Seven.” Speaking of classic Sevens, WordPress 7.0 has now been released.
The “What’s happening” sidebar in X (formerly Twitter) says “The Jew” is trending. How fucking lovely.
The iconic foldout LP cover of King Crimson’s debut album, “In the Court of the Crimson King.” Painted by Barry Godber, a computer programmer and friend of the band, it shows the screaming face of the “21st Century Schizoid Man.” Tragically, in February 1970, Godber died of a heart attack just months after the album’s release. He was only 24.
Historic photo of the Hindenburg disaster. The giant airship bursts into flames.
The great Stevie Wonder, singing and playing at the keyboard.
This mysterious lady was Furbo Filters’s digital spokesmodel.
New York City skyline at night. The tower of the Empire State Building lighted Blue and Orange to celebrate the NY Knicks' NBA Eastern Conference Semi-Final victory over the Philadelphia 76ers 🏀 Live Cam: https://esbo.nyc/NYKnicksSemiFinals 💙🧡
Blizzard of February, 2006, outside Agnes Dei headquarters in NYC. Two-year-old Ava, in a red winter jacket, experiences snowfall for the first time. Her mom holds her and smiles.
News photo of the Kent State shooting, 50 years ago today.
Your humble narrator on an NYC rooftop, avec headphones.
In the shade from a group of off-canvas trees, toward the top of a gently sloping, sunlit hill, a group of well dressed people enjoy a picnic. The top four figures are two courting couples. A red blanket under reclining courting man № 1, and a vivid pink dress on courting woman № 2, create strong left and right containing frames for the action. Below the couples, a single man pays more attention to his food and wine than to anything going on around him. At bottom left, wearing a sun hat, the other single man squats to more closely observe the flowers that are just sprouting up.
Painting: The King in Thule (1896) by Pierre Jean van der Ouderaa. A depressed king is about to drink from a shiny golden goblet. The painting was by the German poem Der König in Thule (“The King in Thule”) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in 1774.
The Empire State Building at night.
Boss Jim Gettys glowers down at his political rival, Charles Foster Kane, in Orson Welles’s absolute cinema masterpiece, “Citizen Kane.” Gettys is a looming, hulking, menacing figure dominating the top right half of the frame. From this perspective, Kane appears small—like an ant on a matchbook. Frame ℅ film-grab.com.
MF DOOM at the mic.
Cannabis plants in nature.
Jack Larson (left) as Jimmy Olsen and George Reeves (right) as Clark Kent in TV’s “The Adventures of Superman” (1952–58).
Text: "Bluesky Service Disruption: We've confirmed that issues with Bluesky's servers were preventing Bluesky posts from being published. We've seen signs of improvement and we'll continue to monitor. Thank you for your patience as we wait for things to return to normal. Identified • Ongoing for 3 hours • Affects Buffer Web App, Buffer iOS App, Buffer Android App, Buffer API." Not in text: Also affects all Bluesky users. Going on since yesterday. Wishing luck and godspeed to the bsky devs. Thank you for your service.
Effin' Birds artwork: a peacock with tail feathers spread. Caption: "I'm not sure that this could be any more fucked up."
Post Image
From the meme by Jake Clark at Tumblr: A superhero character sweats as he tries to decide which offscreen button to push.
1942 political cartoon by Dr. Seuss. original drawing ℅ U.C. San Diego Library. At left, a doorway with a turnstile reads "Pay your income tax here." At right, the ultra-wealthy avoid paying taxes by climbing into a "Tax-Empt Securities Loop Hole for rich." A little man representing the American taxpayer waits to climb into the escape hatch, but a large man representing the House Ways and Means Committee blocks his way. The large man says, "G'wan, small fry. You pay at the turnstile!" Meanwhile, a wealthy man in fine clothes has climbed onto the committee man's back, using him as a step stool to climb into the escape hatch.