Influential Web Designers – Dan Cederholm Dan Cederholm is an accomplished web designer, author, and speaker living in Salem, Massachusetts. He is also a down-to-earth husband and father who centers his life on his family. Creative satisfaction is important to Dan, and is part of what led him to web design in the first place. He believes that the ability to be creative is strongly linked to a person’s happiness.
Accomplishments Dan is the founder of SimpleBits, LLC, which is a small web design studio and weblog. He is not currently actively blogging, but previously used this blog to document his work in standards-based web design when it was a developing concept. By publicly sharing what he was doing, he played an influential role in making standards-based web design to what it is today. As a recognized expert, Dan has had the opportunity to do freelance work with companies including ESPN, YouTube, Microsoft, Google, MTV, Electronic Arts, Blogger, and Fast Company, Inc. Magazine. Dan is a co-founder and designer for Dribbble, an online “show and tell” for web designers using screenshots of their work. This is currently his full-time job, and he enjoys being able to focus his efforts in contrast with the stress of freelance design and working multiple projects for multiple different companies at the same time. Dan enjoys the community-based approach of Dribbble and the ability it gives him to mentor other designers and continue to influence the world of web design. Dan has published five books: Sass For Web Designers, CSS3 For Web Designers, Handcrafted CSS, Bulletproof Web Design, and Web Standards Solutions. He also shares his expertise and the techniques he has developed by speaking at conferences and events worldwide.
Background Dan is a self-taught web designer with no formal training. Before realizing his interest in web design, Dan wanted to be a professional musician. He played drums and guitar for several rock bands and worked for a record label making minimum wage. It wasn’t until later when Dan was promoted to a desk job that he was first introduced to the internet. He became immediately fascinated by website development and design, and began spending late nights teaching himself HTML. From there, Dan worked for a couple of dot-com companies where he learned the basics of how the web works. The big opportunity that sparked his career growth happened when he worked for Fast Company. Dan was allowed to spearhead a project to redesign the company’s website at the birth of the web standards design movement. By blogging about the design process on SimpleBits, he became very prominent in the web design community. When Fast Company moved and Dan chose not to follow, he started doing
freelance work out of necessity. This resulted in him becoming progressively more revered in the industry, and led him to the opportunities he has today.
Personal Interests Dan is a musician and has recently learned to play the banjo. He enjoys eating burritos, watching TV with his wife, and reading to his children.