Customer Reviews

Color & Type for the Screen: With CD-ROM with CDROM (Digital Media Design)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Excellent! Beautifully designed, clearly written, good solid concepts addressed thoroughly. I am a web designer and although this is more of a beginners book, I refer to it a lot. Buy the book, you won't be sorry!

Lots of color, some of it distracting, but useful when it illustrates the effects of different color combinations.

Some of the advice is simplistic to the point of being misleading if followed unthinkingly. For example, on page 62 it states "Even if the text is clearly structured, it may be difficult to read it if the lines are too short. But where there is only a small amount of text, as in picture captions and notes, short lines are perfectly legible". If you read this out of context, you might guess that you can shorten a line of text as much as you like and it will still be legible - but of course this isn't the case. Imagine a 12-character line for text with words like "incomprehensible" or "extra-terrestial" (both 16 characters).

I'm also concerned that the book makes almost no mention of the purpose of the text, even though this has a profound effect on the way it is read and therefore its legibility. The screenshots are nearly from sites with large amounts of graphics and small amounts of text. Different considerations apply to information-rich sites that will be read for their content, for example an FAQ.

I did like the illustrations of the same font in different styles and on different backgrounds. These really help to show how a choice that would look great on paper can look awful on screen.

Buy it for the pictures, but be cautious about how you use it.

I thought the interior of the book was over-designed and aesthetically offensive. It took me a while to learn how to ignore it. The principles and considerations delivered in the book seemed pretty solid, but I felt that the book was starting to get behind the technology curve. A 1998 book on screen display doesn't do justice to what's being successfully done in 2005.

I wouldn't have bought the book if I knew exactly what it would be like, but that's in part because I just don't like the style the book is done in and espouses. Too modern, too small, too smart. . .other people like the style more than I.

Arlan