The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend Tired of making web sites that work absolutely perfectly but just don't look nice? If so, then The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is for you. A simple, easy-to-follow guide, illustrated with plenty of full-color examples, this book will lead you through the process of creating great designs from start to finish. Good design principles are not rocket science, and using the information contained in this book will help… Product details and pricing info |
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55 Customer Reviews Posted
- Outstanding Methodologies
- This is definitely a book that details design and design processes. I've been teaching & learning programming language after programming language. I thought all my design skills were gone. This book has helped me identify the weaknesses in my designs and improve on my previous designs.
- 2007-05-13, 2 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- ok but....
- This book is a great guide for anyone who has never had any art background at all but if you understand color and what makes things gaudy - look for a more advanced book.
- 2007-05-12, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- The author really gets it! A Great Primer....
- Finally! A Design book that gets right into it, without talking down to the reader or smothering them with useless information that they can't apply in real-world designs.
Jason covers all the fundamentals: layout, color, texture, typography and imagery, without assuming one has an art degree. The references to sites for further reading are helpful, as are the plentiful examples throughout.
The author definitely knows what he's talking about, as the website associated with the book is slick & professional, as is the presentation and layout of the book itself. - 2007-04-26, 5 of 5 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- For programmers?
- I will agree with one of the previous comments about the confusion on the intended audience. This book skims the surface on the basics of design. There is some good information in this book if you've got no design background at all. From that standpoint, it's obvious how someone who's spent their entire career inside a development framework would benefit, if they chose to move over to the design world. Stating it is intended for programmers and developers is simply misleading.
The author picks a company for whom he designed a site. Although he covers some interesting topics throughout the book, the project he chose to demonstrate is far from inspiring. Seems as though he could chosen a more interesting project.
I read this book the same time I read "Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design" by Andy Clarke. It is much more inspiring and in depth book in regards to DESIGN. You'll learn some really amazing CSS techniques as well. As of late, I find New Riders publications to outdo Sitepoint books on similar subjects.
I'd wait to purchase a used version of this book... - 2007-04-24, 12 of 16 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Who is the intended audience again?
- One of the dedications of this book reads
"To ..., 'The Programmers' at Acceleration. Your random color choices and offbeat design decisions are the inspiration for this book."
In the Preface (p. x) the author says it even more explicitly
"While the content is directed toward programmers and developers, it provides a design primer that will benefit readers at any level."
That sounded good, like something I've long been looking for. I am a software developer, that's what I'm good at, and I don't even want to be a graphic artist. Nonetheless, I have to make aesthetic decisions in my work. Unfortunately, this book doesn't help me much there.
Jason Beaird is not talking to me with this book. Contrary to the above quotes, he doesn't specifically address programmers, he doesn't take into account what skills they do and don't have. So, while I surely appreciate the principles expounded in the book, I'm pretty much overburdened with putting them into practice.
For instance, when it comes to creating and manipulating images, he takes familiarity with Photoshop for granted. In one place (p. 92) there's even a warning
"Advanced Photoshop Ahead. As this isn't really a book on Photoshop, I've assumed that you already know about many of its features in this section."
No, I don't. In fact, Photoshop isn't even available for my development platform of choice, although there are alternatives. But please, dear author, I'm a programmer, don't assume that I'm familiar with that kind of tool; I even may not have anything like that installed on my machine. When I'm talking to graphic designers, I don't assume that they have my IDE of choice installed on their computer and are able to use it either.
Summing up, I keep my eyes open for a book that lives up to a title like "The Practices of Solid Web Design". I'll happily leave beauty to the respective professionals and settle for bread and butter -- as long as the book actually teaches me how to bake my own bread instead of admiring fancy cakes. - 2007-04-22, 21 of 30 people found this review helpful, Rated:
