If you knew David Siegel, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Jakob Nielsen, you were an early web designer

31 May 2025

Richard MacManus, writes about three of the best known web designers of the late 1990’s. All three were influential (yet were not influencers), though by way of their individual approaches to web design, were sometimes at odds with each other:

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.

It was the thing during those Web 1.0 days to completely ignore Nielsen. It was only later we came to realise he was onto something.