Customer Reviews

Fresh Styles for Web Designers: Eye Candy from the Underground

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Fresh Styles is another beautifully designed book from New Riders. It is easy to flip through, fun to read, and generously illustrated in full color. Curt Cloninger presents a convincing case for abandoning the current trend toward cookie cutter web sites, and he provides plenty of examples for inspiration. He briefly examines the reasons for the development of these rules and regulations in web design and then points out the pitfalls of adhering too closely to any of them. Cloninger thoroughly explores 10 styles, giving several unique examples for each one, and going into it's purpose, history, and function. Yes, he gives his 10 "fresh style" silly names but it's all in good fun and it works for the purpose of the book.

I find this book extremely useful and it is one that I will keep out of a small selection of web reference books. This isn't a recipe book and although it does contain technical advice, there are few code samples. Cloninger isn't giving out style templates that the reader is meant to copy. On the contrary, his intention is to examine the various styles and give us some insight into how they developed, the reason they were used for that particular project, and what did and didn't work in their implementation. Using this approach, he succeeds in turning them into flexible templates that are a springboard for new ideas and "fresh styles" of your own.

It has been mentioned that some of the websites used in the book no longer exist or have changed dramatically. This is not a problem and does not detract from it's value or usefulness, since all of the necessary examples are printed in the book. It simply illustrates one of the author's major points, that the web is in a constant state of flux and transformation, and will remain in that state. There is no point in attempting to pin it down or render it safe, predictable, and homogenous. It is far more desirable to develop a set of skills and flexibility that will allow you to transform and develop along with your medium. Otherwise, it might just leave you behind. The author is successful in offering a balanced approach between usability and innovation.

We've all seen the examples Coloninger writes about in his book but he goes over why they look the way they do and the reasons to incorporate them into your own site. Every web designer needs to first read "Don't Make Me Think" (Krug, Black) and Fresh Sytles. If you put both idealogies together into one site, it will be a success and you will be proud of it. I've been accused of making my sites both too vague and too plain. Both books together will transform your views of design and usability on the web. Fresh styles has plenty of color screenshots of sites and great commentary on each one. Highly recommended for any level of web builder/designer.

A very good inspiration source. A very good design reference.

Great visuals, great text.
A whole lot of screenshots of cool websites saved my time on surfing. But rather than just looking at hip designs and trying to figure them myself, half of the text in Fresh Styles guided me through each design, with highly readable explanations, so I know how to take advantage of them in the correct manner. The other half of the text are just the author's snipes at web usability theorists. He shouldn't have worried that much about being different to other web theorists, because usability is not a religion, I can buy both Jakob Nielsen's book and Curt Cloninger's book. No problem.

Curt Cloninger
The author may not be a world-class web designer (his personal website is a copycat of one of his favorite websites, while his commercial website is not fresh at all) and the sample websites do not represent the whole web (some are just his friends' unpublished mockups), but the courage to dissect and summarize the hippest styles into 10 categories is truly remarkable and useful.

Buy the book. Read the book. But apply as necessary.

A new group of cutting-edge Web designers are changing the face of the Web, embracing its quirks. Like a new-age digital art historian, Curt Cloninger traces the influences of past masters on the current masters of Web design. Cookie-cutter corporate conformity is out. Morphing the masters is in.

Cloninger covers 10 new underground Web design styles, with names like SuperTiny SimCity, Mondrian Poster, and HTMinimaLism. He traces the roots of these styles to the past. He shows current masters of each style, how to perform some of these techniques, and which commerce projects apply for each style. After reading this book, you'll expand your design vocabulary.

The idea is to create a compelling experience through great design. Branding matters when selling products. The "usability legalists" say that "an elegant design that is unusable will fail." Cloninger agrees but proposes this corollary: "a perfectly usable site which lacks elegant and appropriate design style will fail." He says that the Jakob Nielsenizing of the Web, avoiding "bad usability" at all costs, has fostered an entire generation of safe, bland, copycat Web sites that "are about as engaging as a book on usability testing methodologies."

Cloninger is out to shake things up. He says that to succeed a site must have a "focused narrative voice, an angle, a plan, a consistent point of view to unify its disparate elements and give it a cohesive personality." To Cloninger, creative visual design is an integral part of this site-building process. Inbred conservative copycat design is boring, so Cloninger explores the personal sites of today's leading Web designers. What's wonderful is the way he classifies these styles, relating the present design style to the past with great insight and humor. Roll over Mondrian, tell Kandinsky the news.

I really enjoyed this book. Highly recommended.

I'll start by saying that some of the sites in the book are absolutely beautiful. Some of them are cutting-edge, fresh, and as Cloninger advocates, fun.

But for a lot of them, "fun" turns to "frustrating" mind-bogglingly quickly. Several of the sites are electronic works of art that have incomprehensible interfaces and infuriating functionality.

I realize the emphasis of this book is sort of the anti-Neilsen, but there is, and has to be, a line of practicality in web design that just shouldn't be crossed. A beautiful website is not something that someone can hang on a wall, it's something a user is supposed to use. Neilsen gets too draconian in one direction, and Cloninger goes too far in the other. Reality is somewhere in between.

Several of the sites detailed, however, don't suffer from these problems. The "Mondrian" and "HMLMinimalist" sections are almost Neilsen-ite in their simplicity. The problem lies in some of the recommendations that Cloninger makes on how to execute such a site - the code he puts forth is often a bit sketchy and not always standards-compatible (use a new standards-complaint browser, you get a mess. Use and old browser, you get a mess).

Overall, the book is somewhat useful, somewhat not. As inspirational material, it's grand. The sites are beautiful and complex. As a "how-to" manual, the advice given is often less-than-good. Couple this book with "Don't Make Me Think" and the ORA book on CSS and you will have a much better chance of developing a workable, elegant site.

When I read this book, I was immediately captivated by the sites it presented. This book is not meant to be a Web bible and the writer does not say this anywhere...instead, the styles and case studies he presents are meant to show you what can be done with the web instead of the typical bland boxy website.

This is possibly the best web design idea book I have seen b/c it shows the reader plenty of examples and styles and gives basic tips on how to achieve that style. The most important thing the book does is it opens the reader to styles that he/she probably wasn't even aware of.

I totally disagree with the reviewer below that gave this book 1 star...the style names are a playful way of presenting some of these websites. And when you go through the examples, the sites in each category definitely do have similarities...so categorizing the sites is not faux pas by any means.

I've worked in web site design and development since 1995 and I've seen how people (even those with a lot of computer experience) sometimes struggle to get through web sites and accomplish the tasks they need to do. While this book offers a beautiful layout in the form of colorful screen shots and sidebars, I didn't find much of it very insightful or applicable. In fact, one chapter is devoted to a style the author characterizes as "Punk" due to the focus on subverting visitors ability to navigate a site. The author proposes that one can learn good design principles from the subversiveness of the punk style, but I really didn't find this particularly insightful. Many of the styles highlighted in the book would be difficult to incorporate into sites that you're hoping people will actually use. I can sympathize with the author's frustration with the usability geeks and their metrics on how people traffic sites, but I didn't find many of the styles in this book applicable to "real world" projects. Many URL's cited are already "404" and I disliked the "hacker" approach to coding and developing some of the visual effects. For example, one section of the book details how to write chunky text using HTML tables and cell background colors....Who in the world would do this in a real job, especially given today's section 508 rules?! The intent to inspire through this book is noble and it is a beautiful looking book, but not a resource I would really use given my observations and experience within this field.

As a big fan of simplicity, I was thrilled to see the "HTMinimaLism" style get it's due. Vitually all the web design books out there today skip over this absolutely critical design style -- the style of simplicity, the style of reason, the style of speed, success, and efficiency. Sure, the HTMinimaLism style isn't the sexiest of the styles, but it works and that's the point. Kudos to Curt for speaking the real truth. And, thanks for opening my eyes to 37signals.com -- the primary focus of the HTMinimaLism chapter.

very well written. the ten styles examined are explained thoroughly, and then the techniques used are discussed, with URL's given for PhotoShop brushes, clip art, etc. also visit http://lab404.com/ for up to date information. I enjoyed reading the book, and now I can't decide which style to use on my site! :-)

Cloninger does a great job here of touting the over-designed web and bashing the usability factors (he states that the IBM site is flawed, because it attributed to print emulations from an outside marketing firm; wrong - IBM was done inhouse and subjected to usability and focus group testing). I would strongly suggest really understanding the nature of usability before trash-talking it. The web is all about cognitive responses to interactivity - not cool, hip looking "hard to use" nonsense! Your absolutist motivations will be your undoing!

But you did well in showcasing some wonderful stuff, and you're approach towards livening up the web with fresh stuff (except for entropy8 - so old man...) is a noble one indeed. I'm gonna give you three stars...