The Smashing Idea Book: From Inspiration to Application (Smashing Magazine Book Series) [Paperback]

Cameron Chapman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 23, 2011 | ISBN-10: 1119977428 | ISBN-13: 978-1119977421 | Edition: 1

An unparalleled compendium of inspirational designs, photos, and web site looks

As the world's most popular resource for web designers and developers, Smashing Magazine has a reputation for inspiring and informing and this new book upholds that stellar esteem. Unlike most other books available on the shelf that only provide thumbnail images, The Smashing Idea Book offers a lavish array of timeless and enduring graphic designs, photos, images, and web site designs... and then goes one step further to present you with practical guidance on how to apply this inspirational selection to your own designs.

You'll benefit from the coverage on current trends as well as valuable advice on where to go online to discover your own sources of inspiration.

• Provides inspiration to web designers from a variety of sources, including existing web site designs, graphic designs, product design, photography, and more
• Encourages you to look to all areas of your life for inspiration and provides you with methods for finding more creativity beyond the book
• Offers helpful advice on how to use those visuals as inspiration and translate them into unique and memorable web site designs
• Examines what makes for good design, looks at a variety of web site design styles, and explores other avenues of inspiration including fashion, architecture, and interior design

The Smashing Idea Book is a great idea if you're looking for design inspiration and motivation!

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Smashing Ideas for Inspired Design

If your creative well has run dry or you are simply looking for ideas for you next design, The Smashing Ideas Book is a rich source of inspiration. Inside, Cameron Chapman offers hundreds of smashing ideas guaranteed to get your creative juices flowing and your mind buzzing.

Chapman zeros in on such universal elements of great design as color, shape, texture, balance, proportion, rhythm, and unity. She supplies over 700 amazing examples drawn from websites, as well as from the worlds of photography, product packaging, architecture, interior design, fashion, furniture, toys, everyday objects, and more.

An endless source of inspiration and design ideas, The Smashing Idea Book gives you:

• Dozens of screenshots from all kinds of websites
• Hundreds of superb full-color photos of great designs, from architecture to fashion to children’s toys
• Invaluable insights into the universal components of great design for any medium
• Priceless pointers on how to break through designer’s block
• Simple tricks for making existing designs sizzle like never before
• Tips on how to find design inspiration in everyday life       

About the Author

Cameron Chapman (Orleans, VT) is a freelance designer and writes on the subject of design for Smashing Magazine, Mashable, Webdesigner Depot, Six Revisions, and other prominent design blogs.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (August 23, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1119977428
• ISBN-13: 978-1119977421
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.8 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,370,012 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cameron Chapman is a professional blogger and author, who writes both fiction (including The Steam and Steel Chronicles) and non-fiction (including The Smashing Idea Book). Her upcoming works include additional steampunk novellas and novels, as well as a new paranormal romance series. She lives in northern New England.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Sourcebook for Web design - but not well designed January 2, 2012

By Doctor.Generosity TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Having been sent this book for review, it took me a few minutes to figure out that it was about Web design and that was connected with a website set up to support Web design professionals - smashingmagazine dot com. These facts are not well communicated in the first pages, which indicates the problem. This is a book about design and communication but itself is not very well designed or communicated.

The purpose is nominally a sourcebook or collection of ideas - 'inspirations' in the author's word - for webdesigners to browse through for suggestions they might like to try in their own layouts, including photos, patterns from nature, and existing websites which offer interesting examples. However, the reproductions are rather cramped and, since each is accompanied by a URL, one tends to immediately type in the URL of an interesting figure to get a better look. Also the book is intended to be used with the resources found on the parent website - it can't easily be used independently. And there is very little 'how to' guidance here. So what's the point and why would one pay 40 bucks for this? Wouldn't it be better to make this array of photos and links just a tab on the parent smashingmagazine?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Really just OK October 10, 2011

By Darwin's Bulldog VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This book is about inspiration. There is no code and no mention of how specific web page layouts are achieved. This is refreshing... books on web aesthetics are rare compared to books on HTML and CSS. So lots of examples of layout, color, and style. Not all the styles have good examples though. Could not find a good 'grunge' example; one was said to have 'subtle grunge' but perhaps the screen capture was too small to see it.

On the other hand, many of the displayed web pages screamed grid system, it would have been nice to include a comment about where to explore grid layout techniques. A short technical appendix about grids, jQuery, etc. would have been useful. No code, just exceptional URLs.

Roughly speaking, the first half of the book is illustrated using screen captures of web pages. Kinda nice... some are indeed inspirational. From that point on the book is populated with images drawn for Flickr. The section on drawing inspiration by industry is intersting, but not all industried used for inspiration are represented through web pages. The chapter on drawing inspiration from architecture and interior design is all Flickr images. It's not clear why this distinction is made. I believe it would have been better to use both web pages and images together for specific industries. Other industires treated as photo only include toys, technology and textiles.

Since the whole last half of the book is Flickr images the book might have been better organized as inspiration by web page examples, and inspiration by photography. There is a chapter on photography with examples of Lomography, HDR, people, landscapes and macro. Frankly the images selected are not drawn from photographers with exceptional portfolios on Flickr. The ones I was able to locate were images from typical users. Not sure what the inspirational lesson is here. I was left with the feeling that the author was faced with a deadline that could most easily be met with Flickr images, not finding appropriate web sites.

I can only conclude that those things that inspire us are unique to the individual. A book of inspiration is unlikely to satisfy all readers. In this case, I liked the use of web site examples; most were clearly well done even if not inspirational. The images chosen were generally dark and forboding, and to me disppointing. Your mileage may vary...

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Little more than a collection of inspirational websites and images September 29, 2011

By Jamie R. Wilson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

If I were to sum up my thoughts on the book it would be: disappointed. I feel that the book's description promises something more than it delivers, but maybe I'm reading too much into things like "a rich source of inspiration," "hundreds of smashing ideas guaranteed to get your creative juices flowing and your mind buzzing," "invaluable insights into the universal components of great design," etc.

I expected practical tips. What I got was 300 pages of images of websites, print designs, and photos--without comments or explanations of why they were selected. The authors have simply curated content from other sources so you don't have to browse the web, Flickr and other sources yourself. That's not to say the book isn't useful. It is nice to have a book I can reach for when I need some inspiration instead of doing the legwork myself, but I'm not convinced the value of the book justifies the price tag or that it lives up to its own promises.

There is some information scattered throughout the book, but a lot of it is fluff that feels like it was put in just to put some words between pages of endless images. The most useful part of the book for me is "Part III: Using Inspiration"--but it's only the last 25 or so pages of the 390-page book. It's short, but it has some practical tips and guidelines for using inspiration found elsewhere to create new designs. This is the kind of information I expected to find scattered throughout the entire book, but added at the end of it.