Vincent's Biography
Vincent Flanders currently resides in the Seattle, Washington, area and:
1. He's a journalist, published book author, tech writer and content creator. Vincent also teaches and gives speeches on web design, accessibility, and usability.
He has worked in direct mail, database management, and marketing.
2. He is currently branching out into fundraising management with an emphasis on grant writing, e-mail marketing, database management and web marketing. He recently completed the University of Washington's Fund Raising Management program. He'll soon introduce a new web site Non-Profit Tips.
Flanders graduated from Wabash College in 1974 with a B.A. in Classics. The area of Classics he studied was ancient Greek language, art, philosophy, religion, theater, and poetry. Much of his web design theories are based on the the ancient Greek ideas of moderation (sophrosyne), proportion, and beauty.
Vincent spent five of the best years of his life in Austin, Texas, a place he still misses. He was Associate Editor of Access to Wang, a vertical-market computer magazine covering the Wang minicomputer marketplace.
Flanders got his start on the Internet as the webmaster for Lightspeed Net -- which became a part of OneMain.com, and is now part of Earthlink -- from 1995-1997. In addition to his webmaster duties, Vincent taught HTML to various local businesses and was also Director of Database Marketing for Lightspeed Software (now Lightspeed Systems).
In August 1996 he launched WebPagesThatSuck.com as an offshoot of his HTML classes. "I always included live sites as examples of what to do and not do and found people really enjoyed looking at the bad sites and learning what was wrong with them." WebPagesThatSuck.com became an extremely popular destination on the web, winning a number of awards including a selection as one of PC Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites. Other awards most notably include Yahoo! Pick of the Week, USA Today Hot Site and Cool Site of the Day.
Because of the publicity his site received and his use of humor as a teaching tool, in early 1997 Vincent was offered a book contract to bring his unique style to the computer book industry. He quit Lightspeed Net and enlisted local designer Michael Willis to help with the project which was released in April 1998. The book entitled "Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design" soon became the Strunk and White of Web design books. Even though most of the sites have changed ("as well they should"), what's discussed in the book will remain valid for years. Design is design.
Vincent had only planned to write the one book and move on to other topics. ""I thought the original Web Pages That Suck would straighten out Web designers," says Flanders. "But now there's a whole new set of self-taught designers and business people armed with incredibly powerful design tools that let them create sucky sites faster than you can say 'This sucks.'"
Flanders wrote Son of Web Pages That Suck to help these designers - both pros and amateurs - "create sites that are designed for their audiences' needs, not for their egos or their resumes or for clients who are in love with pages with excess sparkle and flash." This book also focuses on helping readers save time by teaching them how to recognize bad design on the spot."
While still keeping up with bad design on WebPagesThatSuck through The Daily Sucker and other articles, he is focusing his efforts on accessibility and usability.
For a detailed description of the book, including chapter openings, visit the Son of Web Pages That Suck page.
Some Trivia:
"In my younger days I met and interviewed a lot of great rock stars such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Kenny Rogers (when he was with the First Edition) and some people and groups who qualify for "Where Are They Now?" status like Bubble Puppy, Gene Clark and Doug Dillard, Ides of March, Blue Cheer, American Breed, SRC, etc. Most of my interviews were marginally OK, but my interview with Roger McGuinn of the Byrds was truly brilliant.
"My good friend Austin Chandler took some brilliant photos during the years and he was my sound engineer for most of my interviews and he started his photographic career with me. Here are some pictures Austin took when we were working together."
Jimi Hendrix Experience
Jimi Hendrix, Indianapolis Coliseum, 1969. Photo by Austin Chandler Copyright (c) 1998 (22K) Austin's second photo shoots (We saw the Byrds the day before). Here's another photo of Jimi, and here's another one. Finally, one more for the road.
Cream
Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton (L-R). Clowes Memorial Hall, February 1968. "Absolutely great concert. Snowed viciously that night and we barely made it back to Wabash College."
Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton. "The arrow points to one of the few pictures extant of me during the 60's. The guy on the left is fellow Brebeuf high alum Art Pettygrove -- and I haven't seen him in 30 years. Somebody said he ended up being a dentist or doctor in the Orlando, Florida area."
First Edition
Kenny Rogers Copyright (c) 1998, Austin Chandler. Taken 1968/1969? at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. "He was a really nice guy and I have no idea where the tape to the interview is or if we even made one. One of my favorite interviewees and I was pleased when he hit it big."
Bubble Puppy
Bubble Puppy, Photo Copyright (c) 1998 Austin Chandler. "This is another one of those 'Where are they now?' groups. They had a really great album and one hit single called Hot Smoke and Sassafras. Taken at the State Fairgrounds, Indianapolis."
"Austin moved out of town and went on to get some more great photos like this one of Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin."
