While reading one of my newsletters from Sitepoint, they recently released a book titled The Principles of Beautfiul Web Design
and it became already sold out!
I’ve followed Sitepoint for a good period of time and the first book I bought from them while still in Melbourne; Build Your Own Database Driven Website is still used as a reference for me. What I seriously like about their books is because it’s not overly technical and the guide is made simpe so it doesn’t confuse you with too many tech jargons.
So coming back to the book they recently sold out; The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, I don’t think I’ll have the chance to review it but I managed to the table of contents of it. The title of this book really made me curious to find out what I or others could learn by picking it up in our local bookstore. And if you didn’t know, I recently had a horrible experience with the MPH bookstore.
To be honest, my expectation of beautiful web design was website references and how it was developed. Almost like the book by CSS Zen Garden; The Zen of CSS Design. But I guess my expectation were too high since Sitepoint books after all are made easy and to teach people starting out or have a strong keen interest in this field.
Let me show you the table of contents so you’ll get a better understanding. If you’ve very keen on web design or not a designer, this book will help you understand some of the missing items you probably wouldn’t have known.
- Preface
- Layout and Composition
- The Design Process
- Defining Good Design
- Web Page Anatomy
- Grid Theory
- Balance
- Unity
- Emphasis
- Bread-and-butter Layouts
- Getting Inspired
- Fresh Trends
- Resizing: Fixed Width vs Liquid Width
- Screen Resolution
- Application: Florida Country Tile
- Color
- The Psychology of Color
- Color Temperature
- Color Value
- Color Theory 101
- Red, Yellow, and Blue or CMYK?
- The Scheme of Things
- Creating a Palette
- Application: the Color of Tile
- Texture
- Points
- Line
- Shape
- Volume and Depth
- Pattern
- Building Texture
- Application: Grouting and Setting
- Typography
- Taking Type to the Web
- Anatomy of a Letterform
- Text Spacing
- Text Alignment
- Typeface Distinctions
- Finding Fonts
- Choosing the Right Fonts
- Application: Tile Typography
- Imagery
- What to Look For
- Legitimate Image Sources
- How Not to Impress
- Creative Cropping
- Photoshop Adjustments
- File Formats and Resolutions
- Borders and Edge Treatments
- Application: Polishing off Florida Country
- Finding Inspiration (or Don’t Always Follow the Crowd)
- Index
There is a chapter or two about Getting Inspired and reviewing Fresh Trends so my expectation isn’t all lost until I find this book in my nearest bookstore and have a flip through. However, I would still highly recommend this book to any keen web designer because like I’ve said, Sitepoint has been known to produce not just high quality books but reading material you would understand and wouldn’t need too much of a tech dictionary by your bed side.
Sitepoint has a large library of books released ranging from simple web design books to developing AJAX applications to building web applications using Ruby on Rails.
What was the last web design or development book you bought and how was it?
[tags]Sitepoint, Web design book, CSS Zen Garden, Amazon, AJAX book, Ruby on Rails book[/tags]