Let’s face it, there are too many design books available nowadays. First there was graphic design, then there was interaction design, and now there’s web design. In the span of 30 years, the ability to communicate graphically has grown exponentially. However, with all of that knowledge, where is a budding web designer to turn to when they are looking for a concise reference?
Having been a budding ‘everything’ designer myself, I know that good reference books are not easy to come by, which is why I have done the hard work for you. What follows are my top 5 reference books for budding web/interaction designers:
Top 5 Web and Interactive Design Books
Robin Williams Design Workshop, 2nd Edition
All good web designers should constantly be looking for inspiration. I prefer CSS galleries such as http://www.bestwebgallery.com, myself. However, when I need references to good, solid graphic design work, I find myself turning to this book.
Robin William’s Design Workshop takes the best parts of her first book, The Non-Designer’s Design Book (a great read, not-so-much a great reference), and builds upon them. Firstly, she goes over the basics of graphic design: contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity, typography, and color theory. Secondly, she approaches many of the common projects assigned to graphic designers: stationery design, flyer design, poster design, business card design, logo design, and form design, to name only a few. Because most of these projects translate to the web, everything in this book serves as a guide to graphic design best practices; which in turn, helps you as an “everything” designer.
What I like about Robin Williams style is that she is short and to the point. Robin uses good and bad examples to clearly illustrate design concepts. While some parts of the book are a bit dated regarding web design, don’t let that discourage you. This book is a solid graphic-design reference which I have come back to again and again.
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition, by Steve Krug
Usability… let’s just say it’s a small obsession of mine. “What is usability?” and “what does it have to do with design?” you might ask. This book will answer those questions and questions you hadn’t even thought about.
As much as this book explains the basics on these topics, it does even more: it explains them in a way that is eye-opening and almost always enlightening. When solving basic design problems, Steve takes the design element out of the picture entirely. This is incredibly useful because oftentimes, as designers, it’s difficult for us to break the habit of designing before developing. Time and time again, I’ve gone back to this book to reevaluate what could be going through the mind of people using my site, so that I design to make my users feel more intelligent. Steve teaches us that form always follows function.
If you have a desire to get inside of your user’s heads and figure out how they are using your site, then this book is for you. If you have a desire to learn how a professional usability expert would accomplish a review of your site, then this book is for you. If you want to create a script and conduct your own “guerrilla” usability tests, then this book is for you. Don’t Make Me Think! is a great fore into the world of user interaction and how your users think. The best part is, it’s not just for designers; this book will help every member of your team ask the right questions before building out a feature, and thereby saving you and your company plenty of money. That’s always a good thing, right?
Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design, by Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Designing the Obvious by Robert Hoekman, Jr. is a lot like Don’t make me Think! by Steve Krug. The difference here is, Robert is a designer by trade, whereas Steve is a usability expert. For this reason alone, the two books diverge very rapidly. Robert takes the core principles of Steve’s work and manifests them through his work, describing the trials and tribulations of adding “just one more feature” to a burgeoning web application. As a designer for an Atlanta startup, this was music to my ears. Robert hits the nail on the head time and time again.
Creating new features and new designs is the cornerstone of infant web-applications. Many teams don’t feel productive until they’ve implemented feature x, or upgraded feature y. Robert invites application designers take a much-needed step back. People who use web applications have an intended purpose: they generally want to get one or two very specific things done. How can your application support that? What features have you added that don’t support that? This book is about what not to do, rather than what to do.
If any of these questions sound like ones you have asked yourself or your team, you owe it to yourself to get this book. Robert has been there and done that, and his lessons are of infinite value to web startups everywhere. I would love to see more people reading his book and taking his advice.
Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action (Voices That Matter), by Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Another book by Rovebert Hoekman, and this time the focus is slightly different. If you’re not into web application design, you can still benefit from web interface design, that’s what this book is all about. What’s changed? In this book, Robert focuses on the small idiosyncrasies of a web-user’s experience on your site: Do you surface keywords? Do you have verbose copy? Do you use video to instruct your users?
What’s brilliant about this book is that it takes many of the web-interface concepts that have only emerged within the past year or two as best practices and highlights all of them. Many of the chapters in the book are short but hardly anecdotal; they are poignant and informative. In fact, there were many chapters in this book that I said “ah ha!” as I read them.
My copy of this book is riddled with earmarked pages and bookmarks, simply because it’s that good. I encourage any designer who wants to look at every phase of user interaction to peruse this book. I don’t believe a true cover-to-cover read of this book is necessary (I would obviously skim the sections to make sure the book, in it’s entirety, would be useful to you). The best way to use this book would be to correlate your reading with the task you have at hand. Because Robert relates his knowledge of every “phase” of the user interaction, you can simply refer to the section of user signup/login when you are developing that interaction, user profiles when you are building user profiles, etc.
Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design, by Jenifer Tidwell
The ultimate (layman’s) desktop application interface pattern book. I do not know if a more authoritative reference exists. Designing interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell takes readers on a tour of every element in application design. The book takes an approach similar to http://www.uipatterns.com, explaining not only what the pattern is, but it’s problem it intends to solve as well as real-world examples of this pattern.
The patterns covered include: forms, text editors, graphic editors, spreadsheets, browsers, calendars, media players, and information graphics. What more, Jenifer gives readers a basic style guide and reference section, making this book one of the most comprehensive on this list.
While almost all of the conventions and patterns used in the book are specific to desktop-applications, this book defines what has come to be expected of applications and application-interaction. Because web-sites are becoming closer and closer to web-applications, the utility and authority of this book can only get broader. Interface Patterns help define an interface designers toolbox. Therefore, learning about best-of-breed practices as well as old, familiar patterns can help you take any design problem and break it down into manageable, familiar, and most importantly, easy to use parts.
What books have you found to be useful?
Are there any books that you would add to this list? What books have you found to be most useful in your practices as a designer?
Quick & Easy Pixelation Effect
June’s Tutorial Roundup
Using Click Heatmaps to Understand Your Viewers
How to Make a Map in Illustrator
*Buys “Don’t Make me Think”*
Thanks for all the suggestions Andrew! Looks like it’s time for me to invest in some new books.
Thanks for the suggestions. I try to buy a new book every week for the past year or more and non of these are in my collection (yet!). They soon will be…
Thanks for the recommendations. There are 2 things I am always searching for:
1. Recommendations on books about web design
2. Time to read the books
I think I will have to pick up “Don’t make me think”. Has anyone read that and is it contemporary?
Great list. When I think of which books I own that fall into the category “absolutely essential”, Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski immediately comes to mind.
Don’t make me think is an excellent book.
It was required for a class of mine and i now love it.
I’ll look into that Robin Williams one and the common sense approach by Robert.
Also to note the Don’t make me think book can be read in a few hours. Incredibly easy read.
The title is pretty broad, should really technically be, 5 Books every web designer needs, I might even go as far as saying 5 Books every Web Interaction Designer needs.
“Prioritizing Web Usability” by Jakob Nielson and Hoa Loranger and “Designing with Web Standards” by Jeffrey Zeldman would be two I highly recommend. But now I must look for these books you’ve mentioned. Thanks.
HTML, XHTML & CSS 6th edition by Elizabeth Castro is a handy book to have too on those days where your mind totally blanks!
All great books! May I suggest a couple more? Web Standards Creativity (”10 web design lessons from 10 of the world’s best web designers”) http://tinyurl.com/6pacss - a really good reference book, and Communicating Design by Dan Brown http://tinyurl.com/6mywrl (more focused on the pre-visual design stages such as preparing strategy documents, defining personas, wireframes, site maps, flow charts, etc. that will build a good foundation of the site). The latter one even has a Kindle edition
As a reference it’s not so great, but so far I think “The Design of Everyday Things” has influenced me the most. In fact, it probably was the impetus behind my branch from programmer to designer.
This was the first book recommended to me by my mentor, and thus the first one I always recommend.
Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Web-Standards-Jeffrey-Zeldman/dp/0321385551/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225151653&sr=8-1
@simon Don’t make me think is as useful today as it was when it was written. It’s one of those books that points out some of the more idiosyncratic things you come across when designing websites.
@Ryan Thanks! I’ll definitely look into picking up Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski
Thanks, Andrew! What a great list and I can’t believe I only own one of them!
Amazon here I come!
yeah, I hear and I think really Steve Krug’s book is the most popular all over design world :))
I’m surprised by the fact that there are no books by Jakob Nielsen up there…Well I would highly recommend “50 Websites Deconstructed.”
When would you publish a book?
I highly recommend the first two. Andrew, the author, let me borrow them!
You should also read SEO books because a lot of designers can create great websites but most clients are looking to be number 1 on Google. So you should be able to design to incorporate SEO tactics
Interesting article
Is there any list published here about books for learning graphic designing fundamentals? I am currently reading Kristen Cullen’s LAYOUT WORKBOOK. Please publish a list for above topic too.
Nice, i will pick these books up.
Andrew…
Thanks for including my book. It’s a very nice list to be part of.
I’d also recommend Defensive Design for the Web (by the folks at 37Signals), which very few people seem to know about.
Steve Krug
(author of Don’t Make Me Think)
P.S. And no, I didn’t come across this while vanity surfing: my publisher occasionally sends me links to posts about the book. (Not that I *wouldn’t* ever vanity surf….)
@Steve Krug: Steve, very nice of you to drop by and comment! Your book will always be on my list of top web books. I’ll definitely check out Defensive Design for the Web.
Andrew
What I like is how O’Reilly “Design” books always have the crappiest looking covers!
I’m one of those people that if a book is talking design(unless the content is freakin amazing), and there’s another book talking about the same thing but the cover actually uses what the book will be talking about I will buy it instead.
It’s like which to choose?
Go to a website that teaches you how to create websites but the website itself is crap!
Or go to the website that teaches similar stuff, not as great or efficient, but looks 10x better? I will choose the second
This list can’t be complete without “Designing with Web Standards” by Jeffrey Zeldman.
It’s a must read, it’s really that good.