Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose


Nicole Fenton - 2014
    You’ll learn how to write web copy that addresses your readers’ needs and supports your business goals.Learn from real-world examples and interviews with people who put these ideas into action every day: Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic, Tiffani Jones Brown of Pinterest, Gabrielle Blair of Design Mom, Mandy Brown of Editorially, Randy J. Hunt of Etsy, Sarah Richards of GOV.UK, and more.Topics:* Write marketing copy, interface flows, blog posts, legal policies, and emails* Develop behind-the-scenes documents like mission statements, survey questions, and project briefs* Find your voice and adapt your tone for different situations* Build trust and foster relationships with readers* Make a simple style guide and collaborate with your team

Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential by America's Master Communicator, George Lois


George Lois - 2012
    Offering indispensle lessons, practical advice, facts, anecdotes and inspiration, this book is a timeless creative bible for all those looking to succeed in life, business and creativity. These are key lessons derived from the incomparle life of 'Master Communicator' George Lois, the original Mad Man of Madison Avenue. Written and compiled by the man The Wall Street Journal called "prodigy, enfant terrible, founder of agencies, creator of legends," each step is borne from a passion to succeed and a disdain for the status quo.Organised into inspirational, bite-sized pointers, each page offers fresh insight into the sources of success, from identifying your heroes to identifying yourself. The ideas, images and illustrations presented in this book are fresh, witty and in-your-face. Whether it's communicating your point in nanosecond, creating an explosive portfolio or making your presence felt, no one is better placed than George Lois to teach you the process of creativity.Poignant, punchy and to-the-point, Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!) is a must have for anyone on a quest for success.

The New Typography


Jan Tschichold - 1928
    First published in English in 1995, with an excellent introduction by Robin Kinross, this new edition includes a foreword by Rich Hendel, who considers current thinking about Tschichold's life and work.

Thoughts on Design


Paul Rand - 1947
    Writing at the height of his career, Rand articulated in his slender volume the pioneering vision that all design should seamlessly integrate form and function. This facsimile edition preserves Rand's original 1947 essay with the adjustments he made to its text and imagery for a revised printing in 1970, and adds only an informative and inspiring new foreword by design luminary Michael Bierut. As relevant today as it was when first published, this classic treatise is an indispensable addition to the library of every designer.

Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities


David Airey - 2009
    But David Airey’s “Logo Design Love” is something different: it’s a guide for designers (and clients) who want to understand what this mysterious business is all about. Written in reader-friendly, concise language, with a minimum of designer jargon, Airey gives a surprisingly clear explanation of the process, using a wide assortment of real-life examples to support his points. Anyone involved in creating visual identities, or wanting to learn how to go about it, will find this book invaluable. - Tom Geismar, Chermayeff & GeismarIn Logo Design Love, Irish graphic designer David Airey brings the best parts of his wildly popular blog of the same name to the printed page. Just as in the blog, David fills each page of this simple, modern-looking book with gorgeous logos and real world anecdotes that illustrate best practices for designing brand identity systems that last. David not only shares his experiences working with clients, including sketches and final results of his successful designs, but uses the work of many well-known designers to explain why well-crafted brand identity systems are important, how to create iconic logos, and how to best work with clients to achieve success as a designer. Contributors include Gerard Huerta, who designed the logos for Time magazine and Waldenbooks; Lindon Leader, who created the current FedEx brand identity system as well as the CIGNA logo; and many more. Readers will learn:• Why one logo is more effective than another• How to create their own iconic designs• What sets some designers above the rest• Best practices for working with clients• 25 practical design tips for creating logos that last

UX Research: Practical Techniques for Designing Better Products


Brad Nunnally - 2016
    But there's often mystery around product research, with the feeling that you need to be a research Zen master to gather anything useful. Fact is, anyone can conduct product research. With this quick reference guide, you'll learn a common language and set of tools to help you carry out research in an informed and productive manner.This book contains four sections, including a brief introduction to UX research, planning and preparation, facilitating research, and analysis and reporting. Each chapter includes a short exercise so you can quickly apply what you've learned.Learn what it takes to ask good research questionsKnow when to use quantitative and qualitative research methodsExplore the logistics and details of coordinating a research sessionUse softer skills to make research seem natural to participantsLearn tools and approaches to uncover meaning in your raw dataCommunicate your findings with a framework and structure

Forms That Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability


Caroline Jarrett - 2008
    The book provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. It features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. It includes dozens of examples - from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color).This book isn't just about colons and choosing the right widgets. It's about the whole process of making good forms, which has a lot more to do with making sure you're asking the right questions in a way that your users can answer than it does with whether you use a drop-down list or radio buttons. In an easy-to-read format with lots of examples, the authors present their three-layer model - relationship, conversation, appearance. You need all three for a successful form - a form that looks good, flows well, asks the right questions in the right way, and, most important of all, gets people to fill it out. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, this book guides readers on how to define requirements, how to write questions that users will understand and want to answer, and how to deal with instructions, progress indicators and errors.This book is essential reading for HCI professionals, web designers, software developers, user interface designers, HCI academics and students, market research professionals, and financial professionals.

The Design Thinking Playbook: Mindful Digital Transformation of Teams, Products, Services, Businesses and Ecosystems


Michael Lewrick - 2018
    By stepping back and questioning the current mindset, the faults of the status quo stand out in stark relief--and this guide gives you the tools and frameworks you need to kick off a digital transformation. Design Thinking is about approaching things differently with a strong user orientation and fast iterations with multidisciplinary teams to solve wicked problems. It is equally applicable to (re-)design products, services, processes, business models, and ecosystems. It inspires radical innovation as a matter of course, and ignites capabilities beyond mere potential. Unmatched as a source of competitive advantage, Design Thinking is the driving force behind those who will lead industries through transformations and evolutions.This book describes how Design Thinking is applied across a variety of industries, enriched with other proven approaches as well as the necessary tools, and the knowledge to use them effectively. Packed with solutions for common challenges including digital transformation, this practical, highly visual discussion shows you how Design Thinking fits into agile methods within management, innovation, and startups.Explore the digitized future using new design criteria to create real value for the user Foster radical innovation through an inspiring framework for action Gather the right people to build highly-motivated teams Apply Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, Big Data Analytics, and Lean Start-up using new tools and a fresh new perspective Create Minimum Viable Ecosystems (MVEs) for digital processes and services which becomes for example essential in building Blockchain applications Practical frameworks, real-world solutions, and radical innovation wrapped in a whole new outlook give you the power to mindfully lead to new heights. From systems and operations to people, projects, culture, digitalization, and beyond, this invaluable mind shift paves the way for organizations--and individuals--to do great things. When you're ready to give your organization a big step forward, The Design Thinking Playbook is your practical guide to a more innovative future.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design


Jason Beaird - 2007
    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. The book's full-color layout and large format (8" x 10") make The Principles Of Beautiful Wed Design a pleasure to read.Editorial Reviews"The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is a good book to kick start your graphic-design journey. The biggest benefit that I got from this book is the knowledge to learn from great designs as opposed to just admiring them in a state of awe." - Slashdot.org"Jason is a great writer, and the book is quite easy to read. It's put together wonderfully, including many full color screenshots and other forms of imagery that make the book a pleasure to read. I'd definitely recommend the book to anyone in Web design." - MondayByNoon"Jason Beaird covers web design in a way that non-designers can understand. He walks you through all of the aspects of design development from initial meeting to finished product. If you are just getting into web development, this is a must read." - Blogcritics.org"This is a thoroughly practical guide to web design that is very well written: good technical depth in easy-to-understand language with excellent illustrations and graphics that support the text. For many users it will be the only web-design text they will need. For those who want to further advance their skills and knowledge it will provide a sound foundation." - PC Update"His "Don't just tell, show!" style makes this book accessible to everyone... It strikes a carefully thought-out balance between describing principles and illustrating them. It is clear and well structured, with practical examples in every chapter." - Mitch Wheat

Think Wrong: How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters


John Bielenberg - 2016
    We are trapped by techniques and assumptions of a prior era.Today challenges emerge at an ever-accelerating rate, and we struggle to find the imaginative answers we crave. When we do, biology and culture conspire to obstruct our progress.Think Wrong: How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters teaches you how to use Future's radical problem-solving system to reliably produce surprising, ingenious, and seemingly magical answers to your most wicked questions. This book provides you with new language, frameworks, and tools to conquer the status quo and drive change.Inside Think Wrong, designers and innovators John Bielenberg, Mike Burn, and Greg Galle show how pioneering teams of people have cultivated ways to challenge both their brains and the culture at large. These people learned to think wrong, and so can you.An introduction offers the fundamental groundwork of Think Wrong. The subsequent chapters present six practices developed by the authors: Be Bold, Get Out, Let Go, Make Stuff, Bet Small, and Move Fast. Using firsthand case studies of success, and offering Think Wrong Drills that you may use, Think Wrong is a field guide for applying this highly effective problem-solving system to challenges big and small. In addition to the drills provided in the book, Think Wrong readers are provided access to free online resources.

Content Design


Sarah Richards - 2017
    In this book, Sarah explains what “content design” really means, and tells you how to put those techniques into your organisation and your web project.This book is short, lively and practical. Using real-world examples and imagined examples, it takes the reader through the content design process one step at a time, explaining everything along the way.If you’re new to content design, or want to get better at it, this book is what you need to get started.

Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs


Ken Kocienda - 2018
    Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few who worked behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years the Steve Jobs era--the Golden Age of Apple.Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple's creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation--inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy--and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture.An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows readers how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses


Jesse Schell - 2008
    The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality video games. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses—one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer—and will understand how to do it.

The Timeless Way of Building


Christopher W. Alexander - 1978
    It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.”The Timeless Way of Building is the introductory volume to Alexander’s other works, A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment, in the Center for Environmental Structure series.

HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites


Jon Duckett - 2011
    Joining the professional web designers and programmers are new audiences who need to know a little bit of code at work (update a content management system or e-commerce store) and those who want to make their personal blogs more attractive. Many books teaching HTML and CSS are dry and only written for those who want to become programmers, which is why this book takes an entirely new approach. • Introduces HTML and CSS in a way that makes them accessible to everyone—hobbyists, students, and professionals—and it’s full-color throughout • Utilizes information graphics and lifestyle photography to explain the topics in a simple way that is engaging • Boasts a unique structure that allows you to progress through the chapters from beginning to end or just dip into topics of particular interest at your leisureThis educational book is one that you will enjoy picking up, reading, then referring back to. It will make you wish other technical topics were presented in such a simple, attractive and engaging way!