Jason Kottke

Jason Kottke is an American blogger and former web designer currently living in New York City. He designed the Silkscreen typeface and has won a Lifetime Achievement Award as a blogger. As of November 2009, his blog is ranked #80 on the Technorati Top 100.

After graduating with a degree in physics from Coe College in 1995, Kottke started work as a web designer in 1996, on projects for clients such as Charles Schwab.

In 1999, he designed the Silkscreen typeface — since used by Adobe, MTV, and Volvo, amongst others. His design work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Forbes, and Brill's Content. Kottke has served on the Advisory Board for SXSW Interactive from 2000–2003 and has spoken at the SXSW Interactive conference as well as the Seybold and NetMedia conferences. Kottke also created the Gawker logo.

Kottke's first site was 0sil8, a collection of "digital experiments."

Kottke, a pioneering blogger, began his blog in March 1998.

In 2000, Kottke and his then-girlfriend (now wife) Meg Hourihan were profiled in a New Yorker article, "You've Got Blog", which introduced blogging to a wider audience. His contributions to blogging were acknowledged when he won a Bloggie Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, after five years of blogging. After a year of soliciting payments from readers who enjoyed his blog, he stopped because he had not managed to attract enough readers or developed "a sufficient cult of personality" to support the subscription model.

His blogging got him in trouble with Sony when he broke the news of the loss that broke Ken Jennings' Jeopardy! win streak.

On February 22, 2005, Kottke announced that he had left his web design job in order to work on kottke.org full-time. He pledged that all content on the site would still be free while encouraging readers to become "micropatrons" by making an optional contribution of any amount. By the close of business on the day of the announcement, over 200 people were listed as micropatrons on kottke.org. Kottke also received in-kind support through a fellowship from Eyebeam, which provided space for Kottke to work in its research and development labs. Exactly one year later, Kottke announced that over the course of the year about 1,450 micropatrons had contributed $39,900, the vast majority during the three weeks after his initial announcement, and that he would not attempt the feat for a second year.

As of May 2006, the blog is supported by paid advertisements, as part of the design-oriented advertising network The DECK.