
Design Books Every Hacker Should Read - discovr
http://davidmckinney.com/blog/2013/1/15/the-best-5-design-books
======
geoka9
Another web design site, another page that's almost impossible to read due to
washed out text.

Guys, do you test your sites on anything other than Macs with "retina"
displays? For example, I maxed out the brightness setting on my Thinkpad x60
and the text is still barely legible. Granted, this TP has a very average
display, but do you really want to limit your audience to Mac users?

~~~
shmerl
Yeah, gray font on the white background is not pleasant. For a page which
talks about books like "The Design of Everyday Things" it's kind of a fail ;)

~~~
discovr
try it now. how is that on your screen./

~~~
tricolon
Your base font size is at 12px. I think that's really, really small. I find it
much easier to read when it's at 18px instead. Here's a comparison:
<http://imgur.com/O7F5N,zCyyz#0>

Now, anyone can zoom in with their browser... but your entire layout changes
width when I do that: <http://i.imgur.com/U96Py.png>

~~~
discovr
good article about body text size here:
[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/07/16-pixels-body-
co...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/07/16-pixels-body-copy-
anything-less-costly-mistake/)

~~~
mattmanser
That's actually a terrible article about body text. Maybe it has the right
conclusion, but it might be wildly wrong.

This seems the most trivially easy thing to A/B test. Does anything less the
16pt cost you revenue?

Simple question, yes/no.

Actual data is so much better than someone's untested opinion which has been
shown time and time again to be worthless in real life.

------
borski
The Design of Everyday Things literally changed my life back when I read it in
high school. To this day, I've never been able to look at doors the same way.

But seriously, everything I see nowadays that frustrates me in its design
immediately harkens back to a principle in The Design of Everyday Things.

Truly transformative book - couldn't recommend it enough.

------
brendoncrawford
Great books, but why is it necessary that _every_ hacker should read them?

How are these relevant to the hacker who writes his own Linux device drivers?
Or the hacker building an open source voice recognition library?

There are plenty of hackers who do amazing work that has nothing to do with
visual design.

~~~
shmerl
They don't cover just visual design, but design in general. While visual
interfaces are most commonly associated with design, design is actually
related to many other areas as well.

~~~
timc3
Exactly like discoverability of APIs, or the documentation of a library.

~~~
riffraff
Latin is related to many things, but surely we can agree it's not a "must
learn" for someone designing a device driver.

Something as general as "don't make me think" may make sense for API design,
but honestly I doubt the applicability of "The Elements of Typographic Style"
or "Grid Systems" to library documentation and API discoverability.

~~~
netcan
Perhaps you are taking the headline a little to seriously, literally. How
about.

 _"Design Books Every Hacker Who Would Like to Read About Design Should
Consider Reading Unless They are Designing an API"_

------
babuskov
I found the Non Designers Design Book by Robin Williams irreplaceable. It
really improved my understanding and skill. Instead of mediocre and bad
designs, I can now create stuff that passes the bar. The most important thing
it teaches you, is how to detect what is bad with some design and what to do
to fix it.

[http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-
Willia...](http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-
Williams/dp/0321193857/ref=dp_ob_title_bk)

------
smartial_arts
I keep returning to the moment when I set up an email forwarding in IFTTT for
every mentioning of word 'book' on HN feed - boy does it deliver some good
links.

------
alexlande
This is a great list.

From a pure graphic design standpoint, I would recommend The Elements of
Typography Style to any developer, as well as Thinking with Type by Ellen
Lupton. A solid understanding of typography is maybe the most important, and
definitely the most immediately useful, facet of design.

Interesting point about Muller-Brockmann as well. It's essentially a
collection of case studies about working within constraints.

~~~
timc3
I would respectively disagree and so would many design schools.

Design as the original poster is talking about is essentially about
communication and although Typography is one of the essential skills needed,
it is not the only one.

~~~
alexlande
And we communicate through words, most of the time.

Typography is pretty important there. It certainly isn't the only skill that's
necessary, but it's a great place to start and is often key to layout,
especially in designs informed by the grid.

------
jerrya
I don't want to seem snarky, but that first picture you have there, the one of
a collection of books where I have to tilt my head to read them and that book
on the left is called "Design of Everyday Things" and talks about designing
things so that ... for instance... people don't have to tilt their heads to
read them.

Why don't you rotate that picture, 90 degrees counter-clockwise?

~~~
rc1
I can think of a few reasons why it might be like that: to lead the reader
into the article; to provide context of a library; to fit with the visual
flow. Easy to criticise (especially on the grounds of efficiency) more
interesting to critique... which is why many of these books are worth reading.
Every wonder why the design of everyday computers are designed to keep us so
stationary?

------
timc3
It seems a week doesn't get by without a post or two in Hacker News about GUI
design or graphic design, often entitled something like "Design for Hackers"
or "Design for Developers".

The trouble with all these posts is that they are trying to shortcut the
methodology of design by various hacks, even something as lengthy as read 5
books is by-in-large a hack.

There is no substitute for practise, for looking and appreciating your world
in a different way (this can be self-taught, I will discuss more below) and
for in-depth thinking about what either comes down to communication or
feedback problems.

Aesthetics largely is difficult to teach and learn and comes from confidence
and a place in the brain that is hard to hack, but communication and
interaction is learnt from early childhood by everyone - it just needs opening
up and awareness of this as we mature.

By looking at the Design of Everyday Things (the book or the things around
you) you begin to appreciate or notice the failures in signs, handles,
buttons, phones, car controls, packaging and if you are tuned into this way of
thinking it can be hard to stop considering the amount of interactions with
“things” we have everyday.

Then taking this body of knowledge that is learnt one can then start
objectively looking at one's own design and interaction problems, using the
same tools that you have been using to analyse potential problems as they
occur and working them out to find the best solution. But knowledge of the
best solution will also come from practise of working with the constraints of
whatever medium are working in (for example print, application, touch screen,
architecture or furniture design).

This practise will mean mistakes - this is an important part of the learning
process, just as it was when growing up, you will learn what works and doesn't
work and in the future intuitively work with this in mind.

------
dylanrw
As a designer I can recommend each of these books.

I'm seeing in various comments that 'hackers' and 'designers' are two
different things, and that a 'hacker' needs a certain type of book or format
to the material. I'd submit that most hackers have a thirst for knowledge,
part from curiosity and part from a desire to be self sufficient in making
their concepts a reality. Digest knowledge, practice the technique until it
works and you've realized your goal? Does this not encapsulate the 'hacker
spirit'? It's funny because most great designers I know came from the same
perspective...

So I say put aside this idea of Hacker vs. Designer and who needs what. A
design is a solution to a problem, visual design language/concepts are another
tool set to help you make effective software and so much more. Don't treat it
like its some sort of voodoo that only left-brainers can comprehend.

------
azharcs
All these books are great but they are theoretical in their approach. It's
good to be knowledgeable about Golden Ration or Fitts Law but it wouldn't be
of immediate help on your next project. The books for Hackers should be
pragmatic in their approach and not very theoretical.

The books I recommend are: Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams. It
focuses on topics like Consistency, Alignment, Proximity, and Contrast. With
these four rules, you can make 90% of your designs look good. It also explains
briefly on what colors and typography to use. When you've firm grasp of the
fundamentals, it would make sense to arm yourself with more theory.

Don't make me Think by Steve Krug. It teaches you to simplify and focus on the
end-user.

~~~
tripzilch
Trick question: _why_ is it good to know about the Golden Ratio?

~~~
kami8845
Trick question: _why_ is it bad to preface trick questions by "trick
question:"?

------
stiff
Good books, but not particularly good for hackers. I have the "The Elements of
Typography Style" for example, it is certainly a classic, but it is written
for people already familiar with typography to some extent, is very long and
most of it isn't very relevant to web design.

A good design book for hackers, would have less than 200 pages and deal with
the essentials, basic typography, using whitespace productively, grids, color
theory etc. in a systematic way. If anyone has any recommendations for that
kind of book, I would love to hear them.

~~~
sgdesign
Agreed. These are great books, but "design for hackers" implies that these
book will help you "hack" design, which they won't.

These books will help you get a better understanding of the principles of good
design at root level, but they won't do much if you're just looking to make
your app look or work better.

On the other hand, these books are much more practical:

<http://bootstrappingdesign.com/>

<http://designforhackers.com/>

<http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/>

And I also wrote a design eBook myself (not as good as the three above, but
it's also a lot cheaper):

<http://sachagreif.com/ebook>

~~~
discovr
agreed. sacha's books above are really practical and go the next level.

------
csl
I've long wanted a good book that covers design principles in a way similar to
how one would introduce a student to calculus, but for graphical design,
layout and their interplay with typography.

Most books I've found so far are merely coffee table books: Pages of very nice
illustrations, but weak on explaining the theory and principles of applying it
to, e.g., a book, poster or website.

Does anybody know of such books? What do serious students of graphic design
read? Is the book "Universal principles of design" a good fit?

------
derp42
I would also recommend "Designing with the Mind in mind" by Jeff Johnson.

Less generic that what has been listed in this article since it focuses more
on user interfaces, it's a great overview of basic design principles, with
clever illustrated examples.

[http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-
In...](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-
Interface/dp/012375030X)

------
larrydavid
It might be worth noting that there are many revisions of The Elements of
Typography Style, the latest released only this month (version 4.0).

~~~
discovr
nice one. done.

------
natesm
Is there an edition of Grid Systems with just English for, uh, half the price?
I don't think I need a copy in German as well.

~~~
msutherl
There is not. And honestly I don't think it's a must have. It's certainly a
beautiful book, but you can learn most of what you need to know about grids
just by Googling around. Typography is a comparatively much more complex
topic, warranting the purchase of a book, and there's more to layout than
grids and Swiss-German design.

If you want to buy a beautiful multi-lingual design book from that era, Emil
Ruder's _Typographie_ is the better buy:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3721200438/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3721200438/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=morgasuthe-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=3721200438)

------
tommaxwell
"The Design of Everyday Things" has been sitting on my desk for months. I
really need to get around to reading it.

~~~
timc3
It's a great book, well worth of a couple of reads

------
danso
This isn't about programming related design, but "A Pattern Language" is a
classic, with architectural and urban design principles that apply in many
other domains: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language>

------
maguay
Another great one: Frank Chimero's "The Shape of Design". More about the
design process than design itself, and that makes it all the more applicable
to anyone who creates anything at all.

<http://www.shapeofdesignbook.com>

~~~
heiko23
I somehow can't buy the ebook, the store appears to be down. Am I doing
anything wrong?

------
richo
I love this "every hacker" who evidently builds frontend systems.

~~~
jalfresi
ALL Software has a front end - a user has to use it at some point!

------
eperoumal
I would definitely add "Nudge" by Thaler & Sunstein to the list. It really
helps understand how people choices are motivated, thus how to make good
design choices.

------
discovr
This is awesome too: <http://hackdesign.org> "Design lessons for programmers,
curated by top designers".

------
franze
the one book these lists always forget: "Understanding Comics"
<http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/index.html>

in my opinion, it's at par with "don't make me think". i recommend reading
them both at once.

~~~
riffraff
can you expand on why you think it would be a good resource about design ?

I read "understanding comics" a couple of years ago and while I think it's an
awesome book I am not sure of why you think it's a good resource for designing
stuff that is not "sequential art".

~~~
franze
websites are sequential art i.e.: the github (logged in) start page
<http://replycam.com/i/GitHub-20130115-111913.png> (left to right), your
standard responsive (corporate) website
[http://mobiletest.me/#d=iphone4&u=http://www.fullstackop...](http://mobiletest.me/#d=iphone4&u=http://www.fullstackoptimization.com/)
(top to bottom)

and also: you can't separate text from design (like in comics) a point that
"understanding comics" makes quite clear.

and user interaction: changing from one state to the next, from one webpage to
the follow up webpage is a transition, a transition like form one page to the
next, also from one panel to the next - and you can determine how the users
experiences the transition, like in comics you can go from one detail to the
next detail, from moment to moment, from one aspect to another aspect, or from
boring to surprise (or, you can even go completely dada).

"understanding comics" is not a 1:1 analogy for website/webpages, but it helps
you to really understand your pages, your design and how the users experiences
them.

------
rhapsodyv
+1 - The Non-Designer's Design Book

------
zalew
where is "don't make me think"?

~~~
msutherl
While useful for the non-designer, _Don't Make Me Think_ is a relatively
shallow book compared with those recommended here.

~~~
zalew
I agree, but it's a good kickstarter. I don't know if the said 'every hacker'
will understand the one about type (I haven't read it, but even as someone
interested in design I find typography quite a difficult subject).

~~~
rplacd
Don't worry about being intimidated - there's nothing inherently complex
that'll stop you from intellectually appreciating the subject - there _are_
quite a few abstractions and moving parts, but treat _those_ like an API -
"pages have margins and text blocks, and text blocks have leadings and..." The
more important part is the intuition (or "taste in design") that lets you
combine those parts together - and Bringhurst aims to give you _his_ view on
how things should work by specifically prescribing style. That gets you over
the initial hurdle in figuring out what works for _you_.

~~~
zalew
I'm not intimidated, and the things you mentioned aren't that complicated.
what I don't get is all those stuff about what makes a font good. I can spot
out flaws in ux, recognize a good ui solution from a bad one, and I see when
something falls off the grid, ohter than those technical sides I like
photography, illustration and many other forms of visual art, etc., I enjoy
looking at good type, but with all of that I have literally no idea why
designers say arial sucks (I know comic sans suck though, fortunately). what I
always do with fonts is basically a negative selection so the end result is
legible and doesn't look awful for my taste, but I'd f.ex. find problems
mixing serif with sans correctly (serif is in general a mystery to me, I use
sans as a safer bet).

this presentation I watched some time ago is cool
<http://www.organizedwonder.com/videos/310> although as with arial, I couldn't
tell you why helvetica is bad.

~~~
rcgs
Typography is hard, if only because it's quite subtle until you really start
paying attention to it (in everything). How good or bad a typeface may be is
irrelevant beyond a minimum quality, e.g. it's kerned well, it has been pixel
hinted. It's simply a question of appropriateness.

The reason Arial is often, arguably inappropriately, slated as a bad font is
because it stacks up poorly against other fonts in the situations where it's
appropriate. Helvetica is more sterile, balanced, and tasteful — it does most
of the things Arial does, but better. The only advantage Arial has over
Helvetica is at smaller sizes on the web, where the head of the t, tail of the
g, and terminal of a help to make the characters more distinguishable (in
theory).

So beyond quality, it's about what's more appropriate. Then of course you've
got to set it well, but that's practice.

------
discovr
Thanks so much for all your comments. I got to learn a heap from you.

------
bennyg
The news.layervault.com link takes me back to the top of the page.

------
xargs12
More Edward Tufte.

~~~
timc3
Tufte is a master of information design and data visualization. However, these
concepts need embedding in a wider range of resources.

------
dreamdu5t
The only necessary book on design, at only 46 pages, is "Notes on Graphic
Design And Visual Communication."

I have met AIGA award designers and Internet design celebrities who don't know
some of the basics laid out in this short book.

It's probably the only _handwritten_ book you'll ever read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Crisp-Graphic-Design-Visual-
Communicat...](http://www.amazon.com/Crisp-Graphic-Design-Visual-
Communication/dp/1560520442)

------
bloggersway
Good sharing, better if it was free.

