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Design Books Every Hacker Should Read

davidmckinney.com

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Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read

#81

Post by dreamdu5t »

stiff wrote: post #31

Good books, but not particularly good for hackers. I have the "The Elements of Typography Style" for example, it is certainly a classic, but it is written for people already familiar with typography to some extent, is very long and most of it isn't very relevant to web design. A good design book for hackers, would have less than 200 pages and deal with the essentials, basic typography, using whitespace productively,…

The most compact book on design is only 46 pages, called "Notes on Graphic Design And Visual Communication." It's IMHO the best book on design even though it's a compact overview of the concepts and terminology... It's handwritten and probably the only handwritten book you'll ever read. It's worth buying just to own it.

I have met AIGA award designers and Internet design celebrities who don't know some of the basics laid out in this short book.

http://www.amazon.com/Crisp-Graphic-Design-Visual-Communicat....

Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read

#83

Post by jamesbritt »

shmerl wrote: post #8
geoka9 wrote: post #7

Another web design site, another page that's almost impossible to read due to washed out text. Guys, do you test your sites on anything other than Macs with "retina" displays? For example, I maxed out the brightness setting on my Thinkpad x60 and the text is still barely legible. Granted, this TP has a very average display, but do you really want to limit your audience to Mac users?

Yeah, gray font on the white background is not pleasant. For a page which talks about books like "The Design of Everyday Things" it's kind of a fail ;)

"Bookmarklets for Zapping Annoyances" is your friend.

Zap Colors is super handy when I can't easily make out text from background.

https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html

Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read

#84

Post by brendoncrawford »

davidw wrote: post #27
brendoncrawford wrote: post #6

Great 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.

In which case, maybe the title should have been "Design Books Everybody Should Read"?

Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read

#85

Post by __mharrison__ »

stiff wrote: post #31

Good books, but not particularly good for hackers. I have the "The Elements of Typography Style" for example, it is certainly a classic, but it is written for people already familiar with typography to some extent, is very long and most of it isn't very relevant to web design. A good design book for hackers, would have less than 200 pages and deal with the essentials, basic typography, using whitespace productively,…

The problem is not with the book, TETS, but rather then web is only now becoming able to deal with some of the advanced typographic treatments that physical books have been using for 100's of years.

The book opened my eyes, and has certainly affected my ebooks and the css I created to style them.

Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read

#86

Post by rplacd »

zalew wrote: post #45
rplacd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry about being intimidated - there's nothing inherently complex that'll stop you from intellectually appreciating the subject - there are quite a few abstractions and moving parts, but treat those like an API - "pages have margins and text blocks, and text blocks have leadings and..." The more important part is the intuition (or "taste in design") that lets you combine those parts together - and Bringhurst a…

I'm not intimidated, and the things you mentioned aren't that complicated. what I don't get is all those stuff about what makes a font good. I can spot out flaws in ux, recognize a good ui solution from a bad one, and I see when something falls off the grid, ohter than those technical sides I like photography, illustration and many other forms of visual art, etc., I enjoy looking at good type, but with all of that I…

I apologize for being patronizing, then.

Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read

#87

Post by alexlande »

timc3 wrote: post #54
alexlande wrote: post #2

This is a great list. From a pure graphic design standpoint, I would recommend The Elements of Typography Style to any developer, as well as Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. A solid understanding of typography is maybe the most important, and definitely the most immediately useful, facet of design. Interesting point about Muller-Brockmann as well. It's essentially a collection of case studies about working within…

I would respectively disagree and so would many design schools. Design as the original poster is talking about is essentially about communication and although Typography is one of the essential skills needed, it is not the only one.

And we communicate through words, most of the time.

Typography is pretty important there. It certainly isn't the only skill that's necessary, but it's a great place to start and is often key to layout, especially in designs informed by the grid.

Re: Design Books Every Hacker Should Read

#89

Post by aj »

geoka9 wrote: post #7

Another web design site, another page that's almost impossible to read due to washed out text. Guys, do you test your sites on anything other than Macs with "retina" displays? For example, I maxed out the brightness setting on my Thinkpad x60 and the text is still barely legible. Granted, this TP has a very average display, but do you really want to limit your audience to Mac users?

Oh and is not mobile optimized so not readable there!
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