Monday 16 February 2009, 10:42PM
The best introduction to web design
In case you have an interest in web design I thought I would mention that the best introduction to web design currently available has just been published: A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web by British designer Mark Boulton.
The book explains how to apply traditional principles of graphic design to the web: good typography, use of suitable grid systems, and consistent colour schemes. I am often astonished at the difference in quality between an organisation’s printed material and their website. The former is usually much, much better. I think this is because the task of designing a website is handed to print designers, who while very talented, have little idea how to apply their skills effectively to the web. Web design imposes restrictions that many print designers find hard to cope with: the range of typefaces available is limited, colours don’t appear consistently on different monitors, and users have the ability to scale font sizes, making it impossible to design layouts with pixel precision.
Mark’s book helps bridge this gap between print and web design, examining the techniques the web design community have evolved over the years for applying typography and grid design to the web.
A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web is available for £12 in PDF format. The hope is that there will be sufficient interest in the book to justify a print run. If you want to know how to design for the web I suggest starting with this, and then moving onto a couple of other fine books: CSS Artistry and Bulletproof Web Design.
Comments (8)
1 Doug ~ Saturday 21 February 2009, 8:27PM
Justin,
I heard about Mark’s book ages ago on twitter, and now it is released everyone is raving about it, in the UK and US web dev scene, even linked from AListApart.
I think I saw Mark tweet that there is the possibility of a print edition coming soon.
I think Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design is part of the CSS Artistry pack. I’m reading that right now, such a useful book. Amazing imagery too.
2 Justin Reynolds ~ Saturday 21 February 2009, 9:01PM
Hello Doug. Everyone is right to rave - this chap really knows what he is talking about, getting a good grounding in traditional graphic design before moving to web design.
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6 Web design Witney ~ Wednesday 19 May 2010, 10:04PM
Many people either think web design is the same as print design or that it is a purely technical thing to do. Although many skills do come over from graphic design, web design takes things to new levels. A must read book.
7 School web design ~ Thursday 20 May 2010, 2:35PM
It’s best to get a professional school website design company to do any serious website design for schools and colleges.
8 Web Design Northampton ~ Friday 21 May 2010, 12:47PM
I know this company that does web design Northampton called Armadillo that makes great websites.