10 Useful Design and Development Books
These are some of my favorite books on web design and development . These books helped me a lot when I was just starting and I thought I’d share them with you .
Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook
A very good book by Dan Cederholm , well written and full of great tips. This is an essential book for anyone who wants to learn more about design using standards .One of my favorite things about this book is that it shows you different methods of solving the same problem , weighing the pro’s and con’s of each method. A must have in my opinion.
How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
I found out about this book on Jason Santa Maria’s web site . It covers everything from freelancing , managing your time and work to setting up and running your own studio plus you’ll get some interesting interviews with a number of well-known designers . Although this book was published in 2005 it’s still worth reading it .
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
When it comes to web usability this is the book to read . It’s relatively short (less than 200 pages) , but extremely concise and to the point , covering all the basics of a good web design . It was a real pleasure to read this book and I would recommend it to anyone who would like to improve the usability of their web sites.
CSS Mastery
This is one of the first books I’ve read about CSS . If you’ve been working with CSS for a while but you feel the need for something more, this is the book to buy . It teaches you advanced CSS techniques and also some tricks for older browsers like IE 5 and 5.5 . The last two chapters of the book are case studies that present fictional websites , demonstrating how to apply the techniques covered in the book.
Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual
This book features some amazing designs and it’s a great source of inspiration . If you want to learn more about color , page and layout systems then look no further . The text is a bit small for my taste but I don’t regret buying it.
Logo, Font & Lettering Bible
The title says it all : everything there is to know about making fonts , logos and other cool stuff is in here . Pretty much all I know in Illustrator I learned it from this book . If you’re looking to buy a book on logo design , this is the one.
On my Wishlist
Sexy Web Design
First one on my “To buy list” is this book by Elliot Jay Stocks . I loved the preview and I’m also a big fan of his work so I’m definitely gonna buy his book .
