The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

Category: Book

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Product Description

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 you create stunning web sites.

Understand the design process, from discovery to implementation Understand what makes "good design" Developing pleasing layouts using grids, the rule of thirds, balance and symmetry Use color effectively, develop color schemes and create a palette Use textures, lines, points, shapes, volumes and depth Learn how good typography can make ordinary designs look great Effective imagery: choosing, editing and placing images And much more

Throughout the book, you'll follow an example design, from concept to completion, learning along the way.

Product Details

Publisher	SitePoint
ISBN	0975841963
Features	ISBN13: 9780975841969 Condition: New Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Format	Paperback
Author	Jason Beaird
EAN	9780975841969
Label	SitePoint
Edition	1
Dewey Decimal Number	006.76
Studio	SitePoint
Number Of Pages	180
Title	The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
Publication Date	2007-01-31
Manufacturer	SitePoint

Customer Reviews

A design book for non-designers

Review by Hangjun Chen, 2010-09-01

As other reviewers have mentioned, this book is an introduction of design principles for non-designers. It's written so well that a person without any art background like me can understand it. I know many people don't have a few thousand dollars to hire a designer to design their website. This book may help you start design websites by yourselves. I said help you start. You'll definitely need more help. This book let you know what kind of help you need so you can go to internet or other books.
I read other books on web/graphics design but those were too heavy and I was overwhelmed and just couldn't finished them. This one is the best. And it only has 168 pages.

Too basic if you have any design background

Review by P. Glockner, 2010-06-22

This book was the text for a User Interface course I was planning on taking over the summer, however I moved and dropped the class. I still had the book though, so I read through it (very quickly, in about 3-4 hours). If you have no concept of design - if you don't know what the color wheel is, if you don't know anything about typography or texture (although, also, what he creates and calls texture is technically a pattern) - maybe this book is for you. There's not a lot of practical examples, no conversation about the tools used (photoshop vs illustrator vs whatever). The author does state that design is difficult to explain, and most good design is reflexive for the designer. A designer has years of experience and training and knows almost instinctively about colors and type (probably because of using bad ones in the past), but if the author couldn't verbalize this, I wonder how he got a book deal to begin with.

I'm rating this 2 stars because at least there were some good resources, like the site for checking colors and typography, but I think for the price there has got to be some better options out there to learn basic design. I was really hoping for a more in-debt UI book but the book doesn't really touch on UI at all, which makes it a random choice of text for the class.

It's ok...

Review by J. Turkevich, 2010-05-24

I was expecting something with graphics, images, examples, but it didn't really have that. I was mostly reading. Which is fine, but it was a bit outdated. The book was in used but good shape though.

Beautiful book

Review by Marilyn J. Oddo, 2010-05-20

It was exactly as described. I received it very quickly and it was in perfect condition. It's exactly what I'd hoped it be. Easy to read and understand.

Aesthetics only

Review by Gary E. Albers, 2010-04-11

I actually read the PDF version of this book, downloaded directly from SitePoint. It was something under 200 pages, including front matter and index.

In any event, I think the title could be a bit misleading for some people; the book is little more than an entry-level review of some basic aesthetic elements of design: the principles of color, balance, typography, photos, and a light discussion of some layout basics, with no mention of how to actually implement these things in code or markup. I did pick up a couple of pointers and new insights, but they were few and far between. Probably the most valuable content in the book are the generous number of references to excellent online resources and example websites.

As I already mentioned, there are almost no examples of markup code, and the few that are included are nothing but snippets. If you are really interested in the actual "mechanics" of "Beautiful Web Design" you'll have to go far beyond what you will learn from this book. I think a more accurate title would have been something like, "A Few Observations About Website Aesthetics For Neophytes."

Definitely avoid this book if you are interested in the core technologies for designing and creating websites (e.g., (X)HTML, CSS, HTTP, JavaScript, server-side scripting, etc.). You'd be greatly disappointed; those subjects are simply not included. The content is really not much more than a footnote to a serious study of the many skills required to create good websites. I think it's good as far as it goes; it just doesn't go very far! I agree with another reviewer's comment: it's definitely over-priced for what it contains.