4 ms·

Books I've read in 2012

13 points by sgarbi 14y ago

wtvanhest 14y ago
Since you are a designer, what do you think the top design books for non-designers are? I'm primarily concerned with understanding the basics and language to better communicate with others rather than be the primary designer.
- thebigkick 14y ago
  Universal Principles of Design http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-William-Lidwell/dp/1592530079 http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-William-Li...
  - namank 14y ago
    I would recommend against this. This is a book that gives you a collection of techniques. Without the knowledge of why you should be using these techniques, you'll end up with weird designs that feel wrong intuitively but are correct technique-wise.
- chestnut-tree 14y ago
  I'm not the original poster, but I would recommend The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. It's an easy-to-read book for absolute beginners in design. You can easily finish the book in one sitting - it's brief and concise. It discusses four design principles: - Proximity - Alignment - Repetition - Contrast Each principle is illustrated with before-and-after design examples, so you can understand how the principle works in practice. The book is very much about the layout of elements, rather than how to create an image from scratch. The book also provides a basic introduction to understanding and using type. The type section is not as strong as the first section of the book that covers design principles, but still useful. I'll repeat that this is an absolute beginner's book for non-designers. There are many topics it doesn't cover that you might find in a beginner's book on Graphic Design. However, it provides simple practical advice you can put to use immediately in documents. That's why I think it's useful for non-designers. Since it is a well-known and popular title, you should be able to find it in your local library. (Note: my comments above refer to the first edition of the book published in 1994, but there have been subsequent editions which will have updated content.)
- sgarbi 14y ago
  Funny thing is that I am not a designer too! I'm a business/web developer usually focused more on the code's side rather than UX side. This is why I read: the Understanding Color: An Introduction for Designers Thinking with Type: A Primer for Designers: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students and Illustrator CS4 for dummies Based on your question I would go for the first 2 books: they are useful even for word processing and powerpoint slide-making
ttty 14y ago
It would be nice to read a review of the books...
- sgarbi 14y ago
  here you are :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4966546 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4966546
pbateman 14y ago
Not wanting to be negative or anything but I'm a bit puzzled why this post is here. There's only six books, the descriptions are sourced from Amazon and there's no comment as to whether the books are good or not. At the very least some reviews would be helpful.
- sgarbi 14y ago
  I love recommendation engines as much I love people making recommendations on good reads based on what they think it would be interesting. I posted this link here just for the sake of discussing the books and maybe learning about new ones. BTW which book would you like to know more about?
  - pbateman 14y ago
    Ideally your thoughts/experiences with all of them but my first two preferences would be Thinking With Type and Understanding Color.
    - sgarbi 14y ago
      Thinking with type gives you an in-depth view into what are the roots of modern typesetting. At first I was pretty amazed in finding out that Italy (which also happens to be the country where I am from) gave a strong contribution to type design during Renaissance. However my purpose of reading wasn't about history. It was about going less random when having to choose a font from a set for a presentation or a website. At least having in mind what are the basic rules to follow when mixing type and setting paragraphs. This is what the second and third part of the book deal with and I would say that the book helped me to get acquainted with that altought much of the experience comes with practice and further reading. For what concerns the book about color the main reasons for reading it were that I wanted to know what color fit well together and even though I am at 75% of the book I would say that I am still not 100% satisfied with the book because it lacks a bit of exercises for the reader. So far I particularly appreciate the highlights at the end of each chapter and the part of the book dedicated to light Since Illustrator is a great playground for color and type I thought to give it a try. As it appears a bit complicated at first sight I decided to If you already have some web design technical background this book flows very fast and I would recommend it together with vector tuts for getting your hands on illustrator in a fast way. I have been eating a lot of information since I got online. I have 1000+ RSS feeds, 1000+ facebook pages and 500+ followed people on twitter, 1000+ subscription to newsletter which crowd my inbox. But what is really important to me? The Information Diet gives a framework for healthy information consumption by comparing information consumption to food consumption. The gist is that you should consume more information from the source and less from re-posting content factories which chase the synonyms just to get better SEO ranking. What I particularly didn't like about the book is that the author has been writing too much about American politics as an example. As a non-american I would have preferred more international topics. But I must admit that politics is a good example to get concept like self reinforcement of your own truth across. In Gamification by Design I got some best practices for design patterns that make websites more stimulating for the user to participate. The best concept I got were: walk the user throught all the steps from beginner to master, useful stuff to do this are leaderboards and badges. The book however is a bit of advertisement for ruby on rails and badgeville. Last but not least Enterprise Games: Using Game Mechanics to Build a Better Business has a lot of concepts which are probably already known to a web designer but not to a manager in a manufacturing enterprise but is still a good way to get started with gamification for people who don't have an extensive experience with online tools. Hope you will find my comments useful. I'm now thinking of editing the post....

13 points by sgarbi 14y ago

Since you are a designer, what do you think the top design books for non-designers are? I'm primarily concerned with understanding the basics and language to better communicate with others rather than be the primary designer.

thebigkick 14y ago
Universal Principles of Design http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-William-Lidwell/dp/1592530079 http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-William-Li...
- namank 14y ago
  I would recommend against this. This is a book that gives you a collection of techniques. Without the knowledge of why you should be using these techniques, you'll end up with weird designs that feel wrong intuitively but are correct technique-wise.
chestnut-tree 14y ago
I'm not the original poster, but I would recommend The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. It's an easy-to-read book for absolute beginners in design. You can easily finish the book in one sitting - it's brief and concise. It discusses four design principles: - Proximity - Alignment - Repetition - Contrast Each principle is illustrated with before-and-after design examples, so you can understand how the principle works in practice. The book is very much about the layout of elements, rather than how to create an image from scratch. The book also provides a basic introduction to understanding and using type. The type section is not as strong as the first section of the book that covers design principles, but still useful. I'll repeat that this is an absolute beginner's book for non-designers. There are many topics it doesn't cover that you might find in a beginner's book on Graphic Design. However, it provides simple practical advice you can put to use immediately in documents. That's why I think it's useful for non-designers. Since it is a well-known and popular title, you should be able to find it in your local library. (Note: my comments above refer to the first edition of the book published in 1994, but there have been subsequent editions which will have updated content.)
sgarbi 14y ago
Funny thing is that I am not a designer too! I'm a business/web developer usually focused more on the code's side rather than UX side. This is why I read: the Understanding Color: An Introduction for Designers Thinking with Type: A Primer for Designers: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students and Illustrator CS4 for dummies Based on your question I would go for the first 2 books: they are useful even for word processing and powerpoint slide-making

ttty 14y ago

It would be nice to read a review of the books...

sgarbi 14y ago
here you are :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4966546 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4966546

pbateman 14y ago

Not wanting to be negative or anything but I'm a bit puzzled why this post is here. There's only six books, the descriptions are sourced from Amazon and there's no comment as to whether the books are good or not. At the very least some reviews would be helpful.

sgarbi 14y ago
I love recommendation engines as much I love people making recommendations on good reads based on what they think it would be interesting. I posted this link here just for the sake of discussing the books and maybe learning about new ones. BTW which book would you like to know more about?
- pbateman 14y ago
  Ideally your thoughts/experiences with all of them but my first two preferences would be Thinking With Type and Understanding Color.
  - sgarbi 14y ago
    Thinking with type gives you an in-depth view into what are the roots of modern typesetting. At first I was pretty amazed in finding out that Italy (which also happens to be the country where I am from) gave a strong contribution to type design during Renaissance. However my purpose of reading wasn't about history. It was about going less random when having to choose a font from a set for a presentation or a website. At least having in mind what are the basic rules to follow when mixing type and setting paragraphs. This is what the second and third part of the book deal with and I would say that the book helped me to get acquainted with that altought much of the experience comes with practice and further reading. For what concerns the book about color the main reasons for reading it were that I wanted to know what color fit well together and even though I am at 75% of the book I would say that I am still not 100% satisfied with the book because it lacks a bit of exercises for the reader. So far I particularly appreciate the highlights at the end of each chapter and the part of the book dedicated to light Since Illustrator is a great playground for color and type I thought to give it a try. As it appears a bit complicated at first sight I decided to If you already have some web design technical background this book flows very fast and I would recommend it together with vector tuts for getting your hands on illustrator in a fast way. I have been eating a lot of information since I got online. I have 1000+ RSS feeds, 1000+ facebook pages and 500+ followed people on twitter, 1000+ subscription to newsletter which crowd my inbox. But what is really important to me? The Information Diet gives a framework for healthy information consumption by comparing information consumption to food consumption. The gist is that you should consume more information from the source and less from re-posting content factories which chase the synonyms just to get better SEO ranking. What I particularly didn't like about the book is that the author has been writing too much about American politics as an example. As a non-american I would have preferred more international topics. But I must admit that politics is a good example to get concept like self reinforcement of your own truth across. In Gamification by Design I got some best practices for design patterns that make websites more stimulating for the user to participate. The best concept I got were: walk the user throught all the steps from beginner to master, useful stuff to do this are leaderboards and badges. The book however is a bit of advertisement for ruby on rails and badgeville. Last but not least Enterprise Games: Using Game Mechanics to Build a Better Business has a lot of concepts which are probably already known to a web designer but not to a manager in a manufacturing enterprise but is still a good way to get started with gamification for people who don't have an extensive experience with online tools. Hope you will find my comments useful. I'm now thinking of editing the post....