Eric Meyer
Eric Meyer is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and web standards. He is, along with Jeffrey Zeldman, the co-founder of An Event Apart, the design conference for people who make web sites.
Beginning in early 1994, Eric was the visual designer and campus web coordinator for the Case Western Reserve University website, where he also authored a widely acclaimed series of HTML tutorials and was project coordinator for the online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History combined with the Dictionary of Cleveland Biography, the first example of an encyclopedia of urban history being fully and freely published on the web.
Author of several influential books on CSS as well as numerous articles for publications such as A List Apart, Eric also coordinated the authoring and creation of the W3C’s first official CSS Test Suite. In 2006, he was inducted into the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for “international recognition on the topics of HTML and CSS” and helping to “inform excellence and efficiency on the Web.”
Eric lives with his family in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, which is a much nicer city than you’ve been led to believe. He enjoys a good meal whenever he can and considers almost every form of music to be worthwhile.
10 questions for Eric Meyer:
-
What did you do before becoming a designer/developer?
If we count "developer" from the time I learned to program, then what I did before that was play with toys and go to kindergarten. I got exposed to programming at about age seven, and took to it right away, writing BASIC programs that eventually filled up the 8K of available RAM. With regards to web development, which I started with soon after college, it was a lot of things. I was a McDonald's line cook, a college student, a geographic data mapper, a (pre-web) hypertext coder of legal documents, and a computer hardware jockey. Once I came into contact with the web in fall 1993, that was it: love at first site (pun intended!).
-
Where do you turn for inspiration?
The web itself; the thing itself, not any specific part of it. I mean, look at it! Built one piece at a time, by tens of millions of people, with probably the simplest possible system for doing such a thing, open to anyone with the interest to build something, gargantuan and riotous and everything we are and hope to be, both good and bad. It is the most human information system I have ever seen and that may ever be. It's been a privilege just to witness its emergence, let alone have played a part in its evolution.
That said, I have a framed print of Kazu Kibuishi's "Jump Station" hanging on my office wall.
-
Which are your favorite studios, designers or agencies?
It's hard for me to say because I'm not really much of a designer, at least not in the sense of someone who creates designs. I can tell when I like design and can sometimes tell when it's going to work for lots of people, but my attempts at design are pretty clumsy. So my favorite designers and agencies tend to be people I've met over the last two decades of web work, and the agencies and businesses they've founded. They're often friends of mine, so I'm obviously biased.
-
Who do you side with: Team Mac or Team PC?
Team Whatever Works Best For You. In my case, that's a Mac.
-
Is your city a good place for designers?
I think Cleveland is just a great place to live, and there's a lot here to inspire. The design community is smaller and more fragmented than it is in, say, New York or San Francisco, but it's there for those who want it.
-
Which technologies are you excited about?
New CSS layout technologies like Flexbox and Grid Layout. Regions I'm less jazzed about, except in print, where I think it could be dynamite. I'm also fascinated by "Internet of Things" technologies, the ways in which we can tie sensors and programming together to do interesting stuff. As an example, my house is heated mostly by steam radiators, with some areas using a hot-water fin-tube system. I'd love to put networked thermometers in each room and then tie them to smart valves on the radiators and the water-system circulation so that the house was evenly, efficiently heated.
-
How many hours do you work each week?
It varies widely these days due to some personal circumstances, but it probably averages out to 35-40. It's just that the weeks where I can only put in 20 hours get balanced by the weeks where I have to put in 60 hours to make up for them.
-
Do you listen to music while you work? Describe your playlist.
Not always; sometimes I need the concentration that only silence allows me. When I want audio accompaniment to something that requires sustained effort, like programming or data entry or writing books, I have a playlist called "Workbeats". It's all music with limited or no vocals to distract me, a mix of R&B, funk, ambient/chill, and a sprinkling of classical and hard rock. It serves as sort of an audio wallpaper-- something I can actively pay attention to when I need a mental break, but that fades into the background when I turn my attention to my work. When I'm doing technical design or brainstorming, something that needs less sustained effort and more creativity and volatility, I turn to my complete catalog of Rush albums, or else just hit shuffle on my iTunes library.
-
What is your favorite book?
Ficton: "Watership Down", by Richard Adams, with a bunch of science fiction novels right behind it. Non-fiction: a tie between "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan and "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage. "The Day the Universe Changed" by James Burke comes in a verrrry close third.
-
What is your favorite sport?
Football/soccer. But I rarely watch sports, lacking the tribal instincts necessary to get invested in one team or another. I rarely watch television or movies of any kind, really. There's too much to be done before my time is up.
