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157 of 161 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good design primer, February 12, 2007
This review is from: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (Paperback)
I'm not a graphic designer, I'm a techie. This book is a good introduction to graphic design for the web that even I can understand.
Jason Beaird takes us through the design process in a number of steps: layout, colour, texture, typography and images. He shares his wealth of in-depth knowledge in a way that makes it accessible even to those of us who do not have a university degree in design. He doesn't dumb it down, he just explains things very well using an easygoing literary style sprinkled with good-natured humour.
By itself this book will not teach you good web design. It doesn't go into any technical details and it (naturally) focuses on the visual part and aesthetics. Things like semantics and accessibility are subordinate and some of the practices he suggests are less than ideal from those points of view.
There are even some fairly serious errors in the code samples, but those are most likely introduced by the editor rather than the author.
If you know your way around (X)HTML and CSS, but struggle with making your sites more visually attractive, this book is a very good resource. It won't automagically make you a top-notch designer, but it will teach you the foundations and - most importantly - explain WHY things are the way they are.
If you are a web design beginner the book is a good resource for the graphic design part, but don't pay too much attention to the technical parts.
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61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow - a gap that has needed filling for years, March 2, 2007
This review is from: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (Paperback)
Having "stumbled" into web design almost ten years ago, with no real visual design background to speak of, I have over the course of time picked up principals. This was no easy task, and meant trawling countless websites and articles, being intimidated and awed by the breadth of knowledge and theory that is required to even suggest that you have an idea of what visual design is all about. Some of the articles I read required obscene amounts of concentration and application to the task at hand, as well as some difficult and surprising mental leaps.
A couple of years ago, "The Zen of CSS design" went some way to solidifying some of the pricipals I had learned, and helped guide me in new directions, yet still at times was a little inaccessible and while it is a great reference for themed ideas and principles, this new book has frankly blown me away...and I really wish it had been written a long time ago!
I possess several SitePoint books, but only two others have I read cover to cover in almost one sitting, and then revisited; Kevin Yanks's PHP book and Stuart Langridges Java/ECMA script and DOM book. Not only was the content of these books superb, but the writing style was infectious and consequently the ideas were absorbed quickly. The same is most definitely true of this publication.
Targetted largely at the coding/programming end of the market, it essentially provides the reader with a firm grounding in the ideas, theory and some history of visual design, breaking it down into sensible chunks and providing just the right level of information to leave you not only with a solid base, but thirsting for further knowledge.
This publication could have saved me quite literally weeks and months of stumbling research had I discovered it years ago, and even now is a brilliant refresher for those of us unfortunate enough to have pursued a "proper" degree ;).
For budding and established web designers, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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48 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tremendous resource for web site design, May 21, 2007
This review is from: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (Paperback)
This is perhaps one of the best books I've read in a long time, mostly because it's targeted specifically to folks like myself: those who are technically sound but graphically impaired. My solid skills behind a camera translate not at all to good site design and layout, so I was really excited to look through this book when I first heard about it.
Beaird has written a very concise, gloriously illustrated work that does a tremendous job of covering everything from layout/composition to textures and color. Throughout the book Beaird uses real-world examples of sites that illustrate the particular point he's working on. Sitepoint's willingness to spring for full-color printing helps nail down Beaird's content.
The book clearly discusses layout fundamentals like balance, grid theory, and symetry/asymetry. The chapter on color hits color psychology ("Feeling a bit blue today?"), palatte selection, and the value of using color wheels to pick complementary and contrasting colors.
The rest of the book is every bit as golden, hitting texture, typography, and imagery. There are a number of terrific resources for fonts, colors, and images with a mix between free and commercial resources.
This isn't a book to find out the details of how blocks flow and clear in CSS, nor is it a book to learn about the latest and greatest in AJAX/Javascript. What this book does cover, and covers well, are the higher-level, vital concepts you need to grok before you start wiring up AJAX controls and laying out <div> elements.
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design isn't just for lame design folks like myself. I imagine even accomplished web designers could learn a thing or two from it. It's that good.
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