John Bannister Northup

  1. Web Designer
  2. Usability Specialist
  3. Programmer
  4. Author

Sometime in the nineties I was cruising around the web, frustrated. I knew nothing about the mechanics of web design, but I was confident that if I did, I could do better than what I saw. I took a few courses at Washtenaw Community College, then went to the University of Michigan School of Information and earned a master’s in information science (2002).

Since graduation, I’ve done websites for small businesses, nonprofits, and academic entities. I launched Bannister Design LLC as my freelance business in 2002, four years later partnered with two other sole-proprietors to form Rapidware, Inc., and in 2009 joined the Creative Design & Usability Team at Ford Motor Company.

  1. User-centered design
  2. Coding for accessibility
  3. HTML 5/XHTML
  4. CSS 2/3
  5. PHP 3/4/5
  6. Drupal 7
  7. JQuery
  1. Design that overpowers content
  2. Complexity without sophistication
  3. Decoration in lieu of design
  4. Interfaces that assume the user will adapt to them