title:  The Principles of Beautiful Web Design 
author:  Jason Beaird
publisher:  Sitepoint
isbn number:  0-9758419-6-3 
edition:  First
publication month:  January 2007 
pages:  180
price:  $49.90 for book + color card + PDF
        $39.95 for book + color card
        $29.95 for PDF only

    beautiful web design

      "beautiful web design" review

Somewhat Longer Review

Contents

• The Title
• About the Reviewer
• By the Numbers
• Likes
• Gripes
• Who's the Book for?
• Final Thoughts

The Title

Beautiful

By "Beautiful" here I understand aesthetically pleasing, especially visually aesthetically pleasing.

Web Design

By "Web Design" here I understand the design of websites.

Ooops, that seems circular to me. I'll try again. If you are satisfied with my first try, you may want to skip over my second try to the subsection on Principles, especially as my second try is verbose, incomplete, and still circular (though the circle is, at least, bigger).

By "Web" here I understand The World Wide Web and more specifically websites.

The World Wide Web can be viewed as

• an information space in which elements in the space can be identified by URIs (Universal Resource Identifiers).
• a network of websites which can be linked together

A website:

• consists of a collection of (hopefully) related pages
• has a name
• has a location on the Web
• usually has a "home page" which can serve as an entrypoint into it

A web page:

• is a document
• is accessible on The Web
• may contain links to other web pages
• can be linked to
• is often written in (X)HTML

Given the above crude definitions, my second try is that by "Web Design" here I understand either:

• the plan for how a website will be composed when completed
• the architecture of a website when actually completed (i.e. how it is layed out, how color is used, etc.)

Principles

By "Principles" here I understand invariable fundamental laws.

The

I understand "The" here to be a function word indicating that the principles are the one's worth singling out.

Worth singling out from whose point of view? Website designers, presumably.

Does the Title fit the Book?

Yes. The book is, indeed, about beautiful website design.

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About the Reviewer

Artist

I was taught that all people are one of the following:

• artistic
• rational
• religious
• practical

Which one affects, for example:

• the decisions people make
• how they organize their experience

In these terms I view myself as artistic.

Publisher

I have a high opinion of the publisher in the area of web design based on the two books I've read by the publisher in that area.

Review Experience

I've written quite a few reviews including reviews of:

• two books published by Sitepoint
• more than 10 books related to the web

Web Design Experience

I have designed many websites, mostly not as part of my job.

I am not a professional web designer and don't aspire to be one.

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By the Numbers

What you get by the numbers is:

• 1 preface
• 5 chapters
• 180 pages
• 1 index

Chapters

The chapters are from 29 to 37 pages long.

Among other things, each chapter has:

• 1 application section

These sections keep coming back to the design of the Florida Country Tile website as an example.

The first page of each chapter has a goldish background. Subsequent pages have a similarly-colored goldish stripe at the bottom of the page and a complementary colored stripe at the top of the page. Most pages contain at least one thing that is visually interesting:

• a graphical figure
• an image
• a screen shot
• a note, a tip or a warning on a colored background with a drop shadow

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Likes

Easy to Read

I found the book easy to read.

Light

Part of the reason I found the book easy to read was the author's light tone.

There's at least one image in each chapter that caused me to smile or chuckle, e.g.:

• an image depicting unity among 4 red monkeys with long snake-like arms
• some hoity toity Circus Monkey images
• some images of animal cracker camels
• some images of some characters in Dingbat fonts
• an image of a flower constructed from bananas

I really enjoyed the author's favorite typography term, i.e., tittle. I also enjoyed the "rule of turds".

Short

I like that the book is short, especially as I learned so much from reading it.

A Work of Art

The book is itself beautiful, starting with the cover. Many of the principles talked about in the book are illustrated in the book's design.

Yep, I know it's a book not a website, however many of the principles apply to both.

Insights

The book is filled with insights. I found many of them quite valuable. I'll list (in my words) three I particularly appreciated for each chapter. You, likely, will find different insights valuable.

Layout and Composition:

• Each page should be recognized as belonging to the site.
• Be clear what you wish to emphasize.
• There are many ways to emphasize: placement, isolation, contrast, size (small or large).

Color:

• There are six classic color schemes. (I'm eager to try a monochromatic color scheme.)
• Consider the warmth of a color.
• The red, yellow, blue color wheel can still be the basis for much good design, though it's not perfect.

Texture:

• Consider texture. (I will now; I wasn't before.)
• Some ways of creating texture are: images, background images, borders, type size, patterns.
• Art history is a source of design ideas.

Typography:

• Choose the font with the target audience in mind.
• Consider the space around the type.
• Serif fonts are good for headlines.

Imagery:

• Be yourself. Develop your own style.
• With respect to each photo, ask: Is it relevant? Is is it interesting? Is it appealing?
• Think about where you wish to place images.

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Gripes

It's hard to find fault with this book, but I'll try.

No Chapter on Sound

There is no chapter on sound.

Guide to Beauty?

On the cover of my book are the words: "DESIGN BEAUTIFUL WEB SITES USING THIS SIMPLE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE"

I don't think it's possible to have a step-by-step guide that assures you'll end up creating beautiful websites. Perhaps that's not the intended interpretation of the words quoted, however I think some people will take them that way.

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Who's the Book for?

Ideal For

This book would be especially good for someone who has all the following characteristics:

• wants to design beautiful websites
• has some experience designing websites.
• knows the basics of CSS

Not For

This would not be a good book for anyone with either of the following characteristics:

• just does not care about beautiful website design
• is confident they already know everything about the subject

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Final Thoughts

This is a short easy-to-read well-constructed beautiful book on beautiful website design. If you've read this far, get this book.

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