[2] Kottke attended Coe College on scholarship in Iowa and eventually began a career in design.

[4] His design work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Forbes, and Brill's Content.

Kottke created the iconic Gawker logo in 2002 in what he claims was "whipped up in Photoshop in 30 minutes as a placeholder".

[5] Kottke is considered a pioneering blogger and began his blog in March 1998.

[9] Kottke writes that as of 2019, "Probably 60 percent of my revenue is from membership, and the rest is from Amazon and ads.