Theresa Neethling is an aspiring web designer living in Pretoria, South Africa. Currently she is learning more about the industry as well as expanding her knowledge of web standards, accessibility and open source.
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| Author(s) | Jason Beaird |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Sitepoint |
| PubDate | January 2007 |
| Reviewer | Theresa Neethling |
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Purchase and help Javalobby |
Table of Contents
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One Minute Review
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Sections
Intent & Audience
Definitely a must for any aspiring web designers and programmers wishing to learn more about the aesthetic aspects of web design. A great hands on guide when designing your first website from choosing the correct color scheme, layout and composition, imagery, texture to choosing a font that creates the right ambiance.
Back to topRelevance of material
From start to finish all material is highly relevant to the subject matter. The content is presented in a fun, interactive and clear manner making it difficult to put this book down once you have started. This book inspires the aspiring web designer by taking the reader through a step by step journey in the process of designing and building a real life website. Making you think out of the box and theoretically steering you in the right way.
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Chapter highlights
Chapter 1 - Layout and Composition: The good the bad and the ugly of web page anatomy showcasing a multitude of great examples. This chapter is a wonderful field guide to creating awesome websites guiding you in the right direction regarding screen resolution finding a balance in your website layout and also the latest inspirational trends.
Chapter 2 - Color: Covering the basics of color theory to advanced color schemes with great examples that makes it easy to implement in your own working environment. This chapter contains a multitude of useful examples and tools freely accessible on the web for example the excellent color wheel/color scheme generator by WellStyled.com and the very useful hexadecimal table and user guide in the book.
Chapter 3 - Texture: Texture on the web? Yes, texture can set a mood, draw attention, imply movement and completely transform a site from just another web property to an effective and appealing website. Texture is about a lot more then just the physical feel of a surface it is about shape, direction, perspective, proportion, patterns, depth, line and volume among others. The author does an amazing job of helping the reader to understand how these aspects work in concert to create effective website designs.
Chapter 4 - Typography: If you come from a print background this chapter is invaluable. First up the all important aspect of taking typography to the web and the limitations this brings with it. Typography on the web does restrict a designer to a certain subset of fonts are said to be 'web-safe'. The author moves on from here to discuss aspects that relate more to the art of typography in general as apposed to specifically type on the web. This includes topics such as the anatomy of a letterform, text spacing, text alignment and typeface distinctions.
While there are these limitations one can get around them by using various tricks related to CSS as well as Flash and JavaScript. The author discusses the relatively new kid on the block sifr, that uses a combination of Flash and javascript to replace text with flash components. Then there are also the widely used CSS text replacements techniques. As this opens up your range of choices the author also provides links to some great repositories where you can find anything from free, royalty free and royalty managed fonts. Through all of this the author reminds us that selecting the correct font can make a world of difference in how you perceive a website and this definitely is not something you skim over but forms an integral part of the design process.
Chapter 5 - Imagery: Finding the right image is key. The chapter starts with a discussion on what to look for when searching for images. The general rule of thumb as explained by the author is that the image should either be relevant to the subject matter or interesting or both. Once you have found the right image there is an important aspect that is often overlooked. This is the subject of the legitimate and ethical use of images. This is a very large and complex issue and the author does a great job of explaining the ins and outs of this topic. As in previous chapters the author provides links to legitimate image sources such as istockphoto.com.
The rest of the chapter covers the creative use of images such as different ways of cropping and how to incorporate borders and edges to enhance your sites depth and movement and also discuses the various file formats and screen resolutions.
I hope the future reader of this magnificent book will find as much inspiration as I did.
