Separated at birth

24th Nov 2004

Here's an introduction to two guys I respect and relate to. Meet Toby Paterson and Eric Meyer, both successful professionals in their respective fields.

I studied fine art at Glasgow School of Art with Toby and we share a great enthusiasm for music.

I studied CSS (virtually at least) under Eric Meyer and we share a great enthusiasm for web standards.

Toby Paterson

Fine artist Toby Paterson's works ranges from large-scale wall paintings and assemblages to smaller paintings on perspex; a main focus being the integration of art and architecture, incorporating the painterly, the structural, the material, the minimal and the brutal. His work manages to be progressive and retro at the same time. The Glaswegian artist openly acknowledges the influence of classic British modernists like Victor Pasmore and Ben Nicholson on his work, however, Paterson's interest in lines, form and structure grew out of riding around defunct concrete buildings on a skateboard rather than a desire to depict a utopian future.

Paterson won the prestigous Becks Futures Prize for painting and sculpture in 2002. He has an upcoming show entitled "The Curve" at London's The Barbican Art Gallery.

Eric meyer

Eric Meyer is an expert on the subjects of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). He has produced several books, administers the CSS Discuss email list and runs Complex Spiral, his web consultancy company. When I think of Eric Meyer I think of pure CSS. In fact, scrap that, when I hear the term "pure CSS" I think of Eric Meyer! Synonymous.

Eric says:

the most important aspects of CSS are the "cascading" part (which encompasses not just the cascade but also inheritance, specificity and selector construction) and the visual formatting (block and inline).

and

a good web page has the lowest possible page weight coupled with a compelling design and useful information.

and

Keep trying different things, experiment with new ideas, and all that sort of thing. Don't be afraid of mistakes, either; sometimes a "mistake" turns out to be the genesis of a really interesting new design or technique.

Eric Meyer quotations liberated from a Net Diver interview.