What to read about web design. James R. Craig, Irina Skala. “Font and design. Modern typography”

The book has been and remains the main source of information, especially for those who want to learn something new. Blogs and articles on the Internet are of course good, but only a book will give you structured, basic knowledge on the subject that you have decided to study.

This also applies to web design. Yes, you can be a talented self-taught person, but you won’t get far without the basics. Someday you will still come across a project, working on which you will realize that you lack theoretical knowledge and basic concepts.

There is no need to wait for this to happen. Keep a selection of the ten best books on web design that will open the door to the magical world of design (and more) for you.

TOP 10 books on web design for beginners and more

The books on the list are known all over the world, and some of them have become “desktop” books for every self-respecting web designer. You can purchase them in bookstores, including Ozon.

Let's get started!

This book was published back in 1999, and there is already a lot of outdated information in it. But the general ideas that the author conveys to readers are still relevant today, and will be relevant for many years to come. After reading the book, you will have an advantage over other web designers because you will understand how the user interacts with the interface and how to make it convenient for him. The author explains in detail what needs to be done to make the site useful.

A must-read for all beginners before learning a markup language - the knowledge gained will help you avoid common mistakes during layout and website design development.

The days when the Internet was used only from a computer are long gone. During the day, each of us can access the same website from a smartphone, from a computer, and even from a TV. But do you know how to make your website look good and be usable no matter what device your visitor is using? Does your site need a mobile version, or should you consider a design that works equally well regardless of device? The answers to these pressing questions are presented in this book.

The good thing about this book is that it was written by a practitioner. There is no dry theory here, but there are excellent recommendations for responsive design, and even code examples.

Who should read it: primarily for beginners, since this book is a complete theoretical course on web design, starting from the basics to more complex concepts. Marketers, advertising specialists and programmers will find a lot of interesting things for themselves.

The author of the book is a professional designer who was able to explain even complex things simply and clearly. This book is a complete textbook on design, starting from theoretical foundations and ending with practical techniques.

This is the only complete book on web design written by a Russian practitioner. Kirsanov does not pour water, writes coherently, and thinks with the reader in the same language.

If you have been even slightly interested in marketing and the psychology of sales, then you have heard that when a person makes a purchase, they are most often driven by emotions. And these emotions should be positive: joy, fun, expectation of something unusual and good. And the site that can evoke such emotions is doomed to become recognizable and ensure high conversion.

True, not every designer knows how to make their website exactly like this - evoking positive emotions and admiration. Websites on the Internet are mostly monotonous, and attempts to do something unusual often fail.

This book will teach you how to create websites that will evoke the right emotions in people. New mechanisms for interacting with visitors, new approaches to demonstrating a product and other recommendations - you will find all this here.

The book was published back in 1979, but even modern designers will find answers to many burning questions. The basic concepts are formulated here, without which it will be difficult for a novice designer in this difficult profession.

Another book dedicated to usability. The author explains how to make online shopping more convenient, according to his method.

The author has a very interesting, ironic writing style, so you will read the book in one sitting. Steve Krug explains how to quickly find usability bugs and fix them. As a result, you will learn to quickly determine the ease of use of any web resource, find problems and evaluate functionality.

Good day, dear reader! We have prepared for you the best websites and books for that exist on the Internet. This information will be useful for both beginners and professionals.

For each, there are many books that deserve the attention of anyone who is passionate about their activities. We offer a review of books in Russian and English.

TOP 25 useful sites for web designers

For those who like to get information from more modern sources, keep abreast of news and all innovations, we have prepared the TOP 25 best sites. A web designer is always in a creative search, so study, get inspired, and develop!

• webdesignerdepot.com– interesting news in the web design space.
• russeller.com– there are a lot of templates and lessons here, especially for beginners.
• flatuicolorpicker.com– a convenient service that will help you choose the color of the interface.
• smashingmagazine.com– this portal contains information on design and web development.
• instantshift.com– the resource helps you choose a design for the site.
• animator.ru– all about animations and videos.
• paratype.ru– information about fonts.
• www.veerle.duoh.com– a professionally created blog. Filled with quality professional articles. The author provides consultations on web design.
• thedieline.com– This site offers a wealth of information on packaging design.
• psd.tutsplus.com is a useful portal that offers step-by-step lessons for beginners.
• dafont.com– here you will find more than eleven thousand different fonts for any, even the most sophisticated taste.
• bluevertigo.com.ar– this resource provides a list of the most popular photo banks on the network.
• thefwa.com– an inspiring selection of sites.
• flasher.ru– for everyone who likes to work with flash technologies, here, there are a lot of useful tips, lessons, and vacancies.
• webdesign.tutorials– the largest library for a web designer.
• psd tuts– here are all the best lessons on working and learning in Photoshop.

• onextrapixel– here you will always find the latest tutorials on Photoshop, Illustrator, as well as a lot of interesting things on the topic of CSS, WordPress. As a bonus, there is a lot of materials for inspiration and new ideas.
• behance– here you will see the work of popular and professional web designers from around the world.
• adobe cooler– will help you choose color schemes.
• brusheezy– on this resource you can choose any brushes for Photoshop.
• logoinstant is a great site for creating creative logos.
• 365psd– the best collection of backgrounds for websites on various topics.
• pixelkit.com– a huge number of free templates.

Conclusion

We are sure that we were able to help you find worthwhile literature and quality resources both for real gurus and for those who are just starting their journey in this amazing and interesting profession. This set will be enough to start web design and improve your skills.

If this article helped you on your exciting journey into becoming a web designer, be sure to share it in the comments.

All the best to you!

By creating a website using a ready-made website builder, you don’t have to worry about technical aspects at all. You don't need to write code - a ready-made template structure and a huge set of widgets are at your service. You don't need to worry about the performance of certain components - the system will do everything for you. But there is still a nuance that you will have to take care of yourself - the design of your website. In order to create an attractive and, most importantly, convenient website, you will have to learn at least the basics of web design and apply the acquired knowledge in practice. How to do this? First of all, you need modern web design books!

Web design books for beginners

We have selected 10 books for you that will help you plunge into the fascinating world of web design and create an attractive and high-quality project using. Some of them can be found in the public domain, while others will have to be paid for. Some can be found in electronic form, while others cannot. Some are written by domestic authors, and some are translated from other languages. But all these web design books have one thing in common - in them you will find useful information on how to create an attractive, convenient and original website.

Dmitry Kirsanov. “Web Design”

Web design - where to start? Feel free to start with Dmitry Kirsanov’s book! It explains in detail and clearly the basic technical terms that a beginning designer should know, and outlines the basics of working with fonts, colors, shapes and textures. The author paid special attention to website design - in the book you will find a lot of information about working with headings, navigation and blocks of text. You can put the acquired knowledge into practice by creating a website with MotoCMS. After all, all you have to do is place ready-made blocks on the page and work on the color scheme, images and typography.

Steve Krug. “Web Design: Don’t Make Me Think”

The popularity of this web design book is due not only to the interesting manner of presentation of the material, but also to the huge amount of useful information for designers, programmers, webmasters, managers and marketers. The book pays a lot of attention to usability issues, so for those who want to create a popular and user-friendly website, this is a must-read. At the same time, the book is aimed at a wide audience and is written in simple and understandable language - there should be no difficulties in reading it.

Tim Kedlec. “Adaptive design. We make websites for any device”

Nowadays, a responsive website is not a luxury, but a necessity for any company. The basic principles of working with adaptive design were outlined in his book by Tim Kedlec. You should definitely familiarize yourself with this book at least superficially if you plan to create a website using the MotoCMS 3 builder, because everything is fully adaptive and displays correctly on all modern devices.

Johannes Itten. “The Art of Color”

Johannes Itten is a famous Swiss artist, the author of a training course that has become the basis of the curriculum of many modern educational institutions. It is not surprising that the author of this book knows how to work with color like no one else and is happy to teach this skill to others. Since they are very important, you should definitely leaf through the pages of this book. You can easily put the acquired knowledge into practice when working with the MotoCMS admin panel, because with its help you can change the color scheme of the site in just a few clicks.

James R. Craig, Irina Skala. “Font and design. Modern typography”

Modern web design books contain various information on what principles should be used to select fonts for websites. Some designers prefer classic fonts, while others like experiments. But nevertheless, from a simple means of transmitting text, fonts have long turned into an independent art object. The authors of this book described the basics of modern typography, which will be useful to both web designers and webmasters. By the way, experimenting with fonts in the MotoCMS admin panel is quite easy - each template contains a collection of Google fonts that you can safely work with.

Heather Bradley. “Design. Modern creative”

The title of this book speaks for itself. In it you will find not only a lot of useful advice from a practicing design specialist, but also a lot of funny jokes and sources of inspiration. The advantage of this web design book is its simple presentation style, many interesting historical facts and beautiful visual design. In a word, this work by Heather Bradley is definitely worth attention!

Aaron Walter. “Emotional Web Design”

Good web design should not only be attractive and convenient, but also evoke certain emotions in the user. You can learn how to create such a design by reading Aaron Walter's book. The book contains many successful examples of emotional website design, so beginners (and not only) webmasters should definitely read it. And if you want to practice, most of the ready-made blocks and widgets needed to create emotional design can be found in the MotoCMS library.

Steve Krug. “How to make a website convenient”

This author writes excellent web design books for beginners, so the collection includes two of his works. In this book, the author, in his characteristic humorous manner, describes the stages of website development, and also talks about how to make web resources as simple and user-friendly as possible. After reading this book, you will learn to objectively evaluate the usability of any website, look for possible problems and quickly fix them. And with ready-made elements from the MotoCMS library, it will be even easier for you to create a convenient website!

Susan Weinshenk. “100 Essential Design Principles”

Webmasters can safely start learning web design from scratch with this book. In the book, the author talks about how design influences people's emotions and behavior, forcing them to make certain decisions. Perhaps this is even more important for a webmaster than a thorough knowledge of color theory or typography. You'll learn how to create a design that will grab people's attention. Moreover, if you create a website using the MotoCMS platform, you don’t need to worry about technical aspects - the system already contains all the ready-made components, all you need to do is arrange them correctly on the website pages.

Ethan Marcotte. “Responsive Web Design”

This book also addresses the issues of website adaptability and usability. The author claims that after reading the book you will be able to create a website that will satisfy the needs of absolutely all users. In the book, Marcotte talked about the most common mistakes website creators make and how to avoid them. Learn from a practicing specialist and immediately put your knowledge into practice with the MotoCMS designer!

We have collected only basic web design books suitable for beginners. Of course, there are many more. Don’t be afraid to search for the information you need, read and bring the ideas of famous designers to life with the MotoCMS website builder. We wish you good luck and inspiration!

A selection is coming our way again, this time about great books on web design. In my opinion, these books will help both a beginner and an experienced web designer find their way. Why does an experienced web designer need this? It's simple, you might have missed something, these books will help supplement your knowledge and refresh your approach.

1. Living typography

What is this book about: a book for those who don’t yet know much about type and typography. If you need to work with text design in the future, then this book will be useful to you. It's generally recommended reading for design students, but if you need help navigating the world of typography, it's certainly recommended reading for you too.

In the book you will find descriptions and explanations of some patterns, tips and rules adopted in Russian-language typography, and also includes a poster diagram with reminders of what you should and should not do in the layout process.

2. Diary of a designer maniac

What is this book about: This book is about designers and for designers - a frank conversation about painful issues.

The author shares his thoughts about the profession, offers answers to the “eternal questions”: should a designer be able to draw, is there an ideal customer, where to get fresh ideas, what is the difference between plagiarism and working with the material, and others. I think you can find the answer to your burning question here.

3. Responsive web design. Emotional web design and so on

What are these books about: In short and without further ado, I will say that the books in the A Book Apart series are a kind of manuals that are convenient to read step by step and feed on new information. They will give an insight into the world of web design.

4. Design for the real world

What is this book about: The book will talk about the tasks and role of the designer in the modern world, about design ethics, about new principles and methods of design, about design as a universal form of human activity that integrates a wide variety of knowledge. All about the world of design!

5. Design thinking in business

What is this book about: Design thinking is the foundation of a truly innovative company and the most important business quality of its leader. Without this book, you, as a designer, need to know how to develop a new product and how to work with it further.

6. Burn your portfolio! What they don't teach in design schools

What is this book about: The book introduces us to the realities of the design business, existing practices and unwritten rules of doing business, which most designers, photographers and representatives of other creative professions learn about only after plunging into real work. The author, in a humorous genre, gives us invaluable information about working in a team, building relationships with customers and colleagues, interacting with clients and much more. Readers will learn that brainstorming often does more harm than good, that “designers are from Mars, but clients are from Venus,” and that a designer has only 65 seconds to get a job or commission. Inside are 111 original tips, without understanding which starting work in the design business will seem like a living hell.

I hope that after reading these books, you will get out of design hell and find your work more enjoyable than before. Since now you will have the main trump card in your hands, you know how to cope with everyday difficulties! Of course, if you are an experienced web designer, you have probably developed your own approach to solving problems, I suggest you do not give up the idea of ​​reading, maybe you will find something new for yourself. Who knows, the main thing is to try!