What I appreciate about Jason Beaird’s book The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is the simplicity with which he tackles each topic. He begins with the client interview, advising to focus on client needs and making them feel at ease.
It’s good advice to use a pad of paper instead of a laptop to record notes in a meeting, but the more important thing to derive is that body language is an important part of the trust-building process of a customer relationship.
Personally, I’m a big proponent of the Golden Ratio, so seeing a good basic explanation of it early in the work was a big plus. He then proceeded through all the basics of design in a very common-sense way.
The typography section appears the most information-packed, and seems obsessively-detailed compared to the rest of the sections. In fact, I could almost imagine the author talking about fonts like Bubba in Forrest Gump talked about shrimp!
Altogether, this book is a very good basic primer on design for the screen. It covers all the topics — though not comprehensively in any case — and presents them in a very understandable way.
The examples serve the text very well, and as you’d expect from a design book, everything looks good to fit its function. If I didn’t know all of this already, I’d be happy to have learned it from this guide.
I will recommend this book to any friends interested in the topic, as well as to patrons at the library I work at (which incidentally already has a copy!) who may happen to ask about the subject.
Comments (3)
We had a great turnout to hear Noel Jackson speak on transitioning from print to web design. Here are some notes from the presentation, thanks to Chris Martello:
Title: “New Media” – putting print in Context
- Delivery Methods are different:
– Print: Buy, read, pickup, consume, turn page for instant refresh
– Web: Search, click, type, read, consume; but there is a delay….
- Web just isnt on a computer: iphone, other phone, browser, etc.
– Web isnt just being “Read” it’s being used for handcapped, visual impaired
- What about the ‘fold’ on the web page? Above the fold…. ‘everything’ above the fold
– NO, everything does not need to be above the fold…
- How do you try to emulate print?
– Graphic design started In print
– Use ‘the grid’
– Practice good typography
– Vertical rhythm
– Design for your audience
– Us a proper line length
- What makes Web Design unique
– Semantics are as important as design
– Perfection does not mean everyone will receive the same experience
– Design for your environment
– Line length
– The browser (reading device) is in control
– Fonts, fonts fonts (cipher, and q-fonts ) look up fonts on web
– Transparency
“If you are OCD, stick with print!”
Perfection on the web = the best user experience
You don’t know what you are missing by using IE6-7 all the time!
- Design factors influencing Design Consistency Across Browsers
– Time
– Money
– User Experience
– User Environment
– PITA Factor / Your Soul
– Providing a graceful degradation for the browser (IE6)
There was an excited discussion about browser usage stats, and why folks won’t upgrade from IE6. 47% of traffic on WordPress.com is IE6 (due to corporate America, folks wont upgrade, etc.)
- The Web is easy to automate; Print forced continuous analysis and adjustment to design.
Check out Noel’s Art Direction plugin for WordPress, which provides the ability to add styles or JavaScript to each entry, without a lot of custom code.
Automation has eased content creation, but hindered design innovation on the Web
- Print has so much more control…
- Tough part is doing some of the same things on the web (since a lot of it is automated)
- Jason Santa Maria – Site example of a site that has same code base, but multiple looks and designs:
- Another great example, Just Watch The Sky
What is CSS?
Examples of what can be done with CSS: CSS Zen Garden.
To learn more about CSS: w3 schools.
————–
Congratulations to the following people for winning copies of web design related books from O’Reilly!
- Roger Rayle – Universal Design for Web Applications
- Todd Sneed – Designing Gestural Interfaces
- Brad Czerniak – The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
- Gerald Campain – Search Engine Optimization for Flash
- Samantha Sevick – Head First Web Design
Recap of Information Architecture Summit: March 26, 2009
March 21, 2009
Couldn’t make it to the tenth Information Architecture Summit in Memphis this year? Join fellow metro Detroit area information architects and web professionals for a recap of the 10th Information Architecture(IA) Summit on Thursday, March 26, 2009 at Wayne State University.
Organized by Wayne State University’s ASIS&T chapter, the recap will highlight key take-aways from the conference and discuss what you need to know as an information architect in today’s rapidly changing world.
Panelists include:
- Peter Morville, president of Semantic Studios who presented a pre-conference session on IA 3.0 at the Summit.
- Keith Instone, IBM information architecture, who helped to organize the Content Strategy consortium at the Summit.
- Chris Farnum, Enlighten Senior Information Architect, who presented on remote user research at the Summit.
- Heidi Blanton, Wayne State University Information Science student and President of the ASIS&T student chapter who attended the summit as a student volunteer.
Where: Kresge Library Auditorium, Wayne State University
When: Thursday, March 26, 11:00AM
Parking: Available at several garages on the WSU campus. For visitors, parking is $3.50 at the gate, quarters or dollar bills only.
If you are interested in attending please RSVP.
Meet and greet after the panel on the 3rd Floor of the Kresge Library, with refreshments.
Can’t attend the recap? Catch the live recording on UStream.
Book Review: Beginning Spring 2
March 13, 2009
The title of this book Beginning Spring 2: From Novice to Professional may be a bit misleading. I think if you are new to Spring and especially if you are new to Java frameworks in general, you would have a hard time with this book. This is not a how do you build a Spring application type book as I was expecting. After reading several chapters I still didn’t really know how to get started, and I have years of experience with Java and the Struts framework. The author does a fair job of explaining the benefits of Struts in a theoretical way, but the concrete examples seem disconnected and difficult to apply. There is no “Hello World” type example that explains how to get a simple Spring application up an running.
The book does contain some good examples once you are familiar with Spring, so this book may be more beneficial for experienced Spring developers. If you are a true beginner, this may not be the book for you.
- Title: Beginning Spring 2: From Novice to Professional
- Author: Dave Minter
- Publisher: Apress
- ISBN: 1590596854
- Date: 2007
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 271
- Cover Price: USD: $39.99
Join us on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 when Noel Jackson of Automattic, Inc. (known for their WordPress and Akismet projects) will discuss the differences between print and web design.
What separates print and web in the design community? What do designers need to know to bridge the gap between print and the web? What constraints do web designers need to understand?
We’re thrilled that Noel will be presenting our first “design-focused” topic at Refresh Detroit!
Noel will discuss:
- The differences between print and web design.
- What should you be concerned about, and what should the browser deal with?
- Pixel perfection: Legend or fallacy?
- Color profiles, your screen vs. theirs.
- Variables introduced by machine and human that make web design a unique mix of science and art.
Background
Noel Jackson is an ubergeek, designer, and developer. Pulled from the depths of freelance design, he now works for Automattic, Inc. He loves the internet and dreams in HTML quite frequently. A self-proclaimed polymath, Noel was once a secret agent, fashion photographer, and ran a successful post-production studio in NYC.
When not pushing pixels and babbling about regexes, he’s probably listening to music (300 LPs and 250 gigs in all), DJing, or creating something (generative art is a favorite as of late). He lives in Detroit with his beautiful wife Stephanie, a fish named Hiro, and a chinchilla named Elvis.
Where: Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan. We will be meeting in Room 150 at the Morris Lawrence Building (map). Plenty of free parking is available adjacent to the building.
When: Wednesday, March 25, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Cost: Free! Open to the public.
RSVP at Upcoming.org
Our apologies. We hoped to have a live stream of the meeting, but the UStream connection kept dropping. The meeting is being recorded and we’ll post the recording of the meeting later.
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