10 Free Online Books for Web Designers

Henry — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:50:13 +0000

There’s a never ending supply of information out there for us web designers. If there’s something we need to learn, we can find it in one form or another. Sometimes it may be on a blog or it could be in a book. While you may have to shell our some money for a good web design book, there are a number of them out that have online versions that are totally free. Here are 10 you should find very useful.

A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web

A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web aims to teach you techniques for designing your website using the principles of graphic design. Featuring five sections, each covering a core aspect of graphic design: Getting Started, Research, Typography, Colour, and Layout.

Getting Real

Getting Real is the business, design, programming, and marketing philosophies of 37signals — a developer of web-based software used by over 1 million people and businesses in 70 countries.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

In order to allay some of the myths surrounding typography on the web, is structured to step through the principles found in Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style, explaining how to accomplish each using techniques available in HTML and CSS.

jQuery Fundamentals

jQuery Fundamentals was written to help you understand the fundamentals of this JavaScript library and teach you how to complete basic tasks with jQuery.

Web Style Guide, 3rd Edition

Consistently praised as the best volume on classic elements of web site design, Web Style Guide, now in its third edition, maintains an emphasis on fundamentals while bringing every chapter topic up-to-date.

Access by Design

Access by Design offers guidelines for universal usability, and the online version includes examples and links to related articles and tutorials.

Web Designer’s Success Guide

Web Designer’s Success Guide is the definitive guide to starting your own freelance Web design business. This book gives you step-by-step instructions on how to do things like transition from full-time to self-employment and how to price your services appropriately.

The Web Book

The Web Book contains all the information you need to create a Web site from scratch. It covers everything from registering a domain name and renting some hosting space, to creating your first HTML page, to building full online database applications with PHP and MySQL. It also tells you how to market and promote your site, and how to make money from it.

Dive Into HTML 5

This book seeks to elaborate on a hand-picked Selection of features from the HTML5 specification and other fine Standards.

http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/index.html

This book will help you understand and apply principles to make your products more accessible.

Turn Off Your Computer and Go Read a Book

Niki — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:41:15 +0000

I know what you are saying. What do you want me to do? Turn off my computer? What? Yes! Turn it off and step away. Sometimes we need to disconnect from the internet and revert to a more basic technology: Books! Here are 8 suggestions from my bookshelf.

Bullet Proof Web Design

This book helped me learn how to make table-less websites. Dan Cedarholm takes you from the basics to the advanced css ninja skills. He also shows how popular websites are (horribly) coded and then shows you a better way to code them. This book is a staple in my library which i still reference a lot.

CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions

The only other css book I own. This book is the older geekier cousin of bullet proof web design. less pictures, way more technical, but still amazing. this book gets down into the nitty gritty of css. Css mastery is worth reading, and re-reading again and again.

Caffeine For The Creative Mind

Not specifically a web design book but a great addition to a library anyways. Do you ever feel stuck or uninspired? This book has tons of little creative exercises that will jump start your brain and inspire you.

Don’t Make Me Think

Another great staple in a web designers library. The information in this book may seem obvious but its really good to sit down and think about usability and testing. Web conventions exist for a reason! This book is a quick read that will get you thinking about your users.

Making And Breaking The Grid

This book was required reading (or rather viewing) for one of my classes in college for a good reason. Grids are the skeleton of good design – without them our designs would be chaotic and unorganized. Once you know how to establish a follow a grid structure, you learn how to break it!

History Of Graphic Design

Web design is deeply indebted to its closely related cousin graphic design. If you don’t read this book (which you probably should) just flipping through it will surely give you inspiration. Its amazing to see what designers produced before computers existed! Learn from your design elders and read this book!

Thinking With Type

While this book may be written for a print designer we can still gain alot of information from it and apply it to the web. Thinking with type is a great intro to typography book with tons of pictures and examples of how to make beautiful type.

Fingerprint

Fingerprint will help you think outside the ‘div box’ that we often get trapped in as web designers. This book is packed with hand drawn inspiration and insight from designers about the creation process. 

Other Resources  

Thinking with type: the companion website 

Design History
Design History is a great site by Nancy Stock-Allen that provides a brief outline of the history of graphic design.   

Elements of typographic style applied to the web 

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