Is there an edition of Grid Systems with just English for, uh, half the price? I don't think I need a copy in German as well.
Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
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Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#22Is there an edition of Grid Systems with just English for, uh, half the price? I don't think I need a copy in German as well.
There is not. And honestly I don't think it's a must have. It's certainly a beautiful book, but you can learn most of what you need to know about grids just by Googling around. Typography is a comparatively much more complex topic, warranting the purchase of a book, and there's more to layout than grids and Swiss-German design.
If you want to buy a beautiful multi-lingual design book from that era, Emil Ruder's Typographie is the better buy: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3721200438/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
try it now. how is that on your screen./
Your base font size is at 12px. I think that's really, really small. I find it much easier to read when it's at 18px instead. Here's a comparison: http://imgur.com/O7F5N,zCyyz#0 Now, anyone can zoom in with their browser... but your entire layout changes width when I do that: http://i.imgur.com/U96Py.png
good article about body text size here: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/07/16-pixels-body-co...
Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#24where is "don't make me think"?
While useful for the non-designer, Don't Make Me Think is a relatively shallow book compared with those recommended here.
Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#25Is there an edition of Grid Systems with just English for, uh, half the price? I don't think I need a copy in German as well.
I wish. I can't read German either :( Some secondhand copies around, but they're still expensive. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/3721201450/ref=dp_olp...
Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#26Great books, but why is it necessary that every hacker should read them? How are these relevant to the hacker who writes his own Linux device drivers? Or the hacker building an open source voice recognition library? There are plenty of hackers who do amazing work that has nothing to do with visual design.
I wish even the "deep" hackers would read these books and realise that command line interfaces and C prototypes are human interfaces too. Yet every time something explodes because someone confused -r and -R on the shell or something equally ridiculous, the internet echo is largely "LOL if you cannot read manpages, then why are you even using computers".
I liked the nuclear reactor example in The Design of Everyday Things because it illustrated (again) that usability is important even if only trained professionals have to use .
Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#27Great books, but why is it necessary that every hacker should read them? How are these relevant to the hacker who writes his own Linux device drivers? Or the hacker building an open source voice recognition library? There are plenty of hackers who do amazing work that has nothing to do with visual design.
Life is short, but certainly not so short that you don't have time for a few good books that aren't directly related to what you do.
Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#28Great books, but why is it necessary that every hacker should read them? How are these relevant to the hacker who writes his own Linux device drivers? Or the hacker building an open source voice recognition library? There are plenty of hackers who do amazing work that has nothing to do with visual design.
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Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#29Great books, but why is it necessary that every hacker should read them? How are these relevant to the hacker who writes his own Linux device drivers? Or the hacker building an open source voice recognition library? There are plenty of hackers who do amazing work that has nothing to do with visual design.
Because the author of the post probably has a very narrow vision of what the term "hacker" means. And putting "every" and "should" in the same sentence makes it sound like it's some kind of universal advice worth gold or something. I know 2 of the books mentioned and they are great books, but the poster should mention that the Design of Everyday Things is starting to be seriously dated. At least for the examples expo…
hey ekianjo. you're absolutely right in that 'design of everyday things'is an old book. It also has some examples that will probably never age. Out of the 5 books in the list, it has been the most useful of any design book (to me). Changed how I think about design.
Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read
#30Is there an edition of Grid Systems with just English for, uh, half the price? I don't think I need a copy in German as well.
As someone who has owned it for years, it's still one of my favourite books, but you don't need to read it for UI design, there are other references now days