Why did he do it? "In my world, the designer drives the train." Other designers must agree -- his Creating Killer Web Sites was the bestselling Web book of 1996.
Now Siegel says new tools, such as style sheets and DHTML, may finally give designers the control they need, without having to make hacks on HTML's original structure. Even so, he says, the Web remains a visual wasteland.
» read interview
» hear interview
Job
Education
First computer
To purchase "Creating Killer Web Sites," click here.
First time on the Internet
Pessimistic statement about the Internet
Optimistic statement about the Internet
To purchase "Creating Killer Web Sites," click here.
Web designer; author, "Creating Killer Web Sites"; chief sturgeon at Studio Verso; Web design columnist: High Five Site of the Week
Master's degree, digital typography, Stanford University
A CP/M machine in 1978. "No hard disk." Then an IBM PC, followed by a Macintosh. "I waited. I held out. I had a 128K to play with, and a Lisa I played with a lot at Stanford. But I held out for the 512. That was my first real, proud computer, the 512K Macintosh. And of course I painted that computer granite."
1993. "A friend had a SLIP connection in San Francisco. I got on there and started to go to the European sites ... research sites, and I said 'I'm surfing,' and he said, 'You're surfing.' It's so cool. I have been totally addicted since that day."
"The Web is a visual wasteland. Come on. How many great Websites are there? Let me tell you, it's pretty bleak."
"I'm very excited about the democratization of the Web, its ability to wipe out lots of big intermediaries that were causing problems. If you look at the real world, we're doing a lot of things the hard way. The Web is going to make a whole lot of things easier."