Jeffrey Zeldman: The profession that dare not speak its name

Hypothesis: No one has tried to measure web design because web design has been a hidden profession.

The hypothesis is neither far-fetched nor particularly insightful. If you think about it, it’s obvious. Web design has been hidden because its workers have, for the most part, been masked by old business and old media categories. Call it death by org chart…

I still have a hard time telling people what I do. I have a hard time explaining what I do. There is no succinct way to describe it to the lay person in a way that is meaningful to them. Often I end up with something pithy and semi-humorous, “I make web pages,” or, “I draw pictures for a living.”

That is, you should take it if you’re working in the industry…

There are two words I never thought I’d see on the SSDD web site: Paris Hilton. But FreelanceSwitch.com has a humorous article that does shows even the most vacuous celebrity can provide a certain kind of business wisdom. In a nutshell:

1. It pays to network
2. Build a brand around your name
3. It helps to be able to offer add-on services to your clients
4. Sell yourself
5. When things go wrong try to make the best of a bad situation

I would say that Ms. Hilton is certainly guru-level status on numbers 4 and 5.

12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them. Though this is an interesting article, I’m having trouble pidgeon-holing any of my clients in these categories. I prefer to see these as client archetypes, with most clients have a few of these qualities. Thankfully I don’t have, and hopefully will never have, the “cool” client. Four years of high school was quite enough thankyouverymuch:

The you-should-be-so-lucky client is much cooler than you and they know it. They generally have a cool but low paying project for you and are in an industry everyone wants to work in…think music, film and fashion industries in particular.

Update (05/21/07): FreelanceSwitch.com turns the tables for The 13 Breeds of Freelancers.

This article, Guidelines for creating better markup, isn’t telling me anything I don’t already know, but it’s always nice to review. People think HTML is easy, and for the most part it is, but that doesn’t mean it should be sloppy.

I’ve mentioned several times here that I feel writing markup (or any other code, for that matter) is a craft. I take pride in writing as lean and clean code as possible. From the looks of things there aren’t a whole lot of other Web professionals that feel that way, but we do exist.