Ask HN: Great intro books for web design/graphic design?

[furtivefelon]

Hi all,

I suck at design, i can't for the life of me figure out which 4 colors work well together, and how to put them together. Is there any definitive design books to read to figure out these questions? Such as SICP in Computer Science.

Thanks a lot!

Jason

[weaksauce]

I don't think it's the SICP of Design but the non-designers design book is a good terse book of design for us CS folk. Though for strict design and not aesthetics the "universal principals of design" should serve well.

[ganley → weaksauce]

Best intro-to-design book I've seen. Just to clarify, that's "The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams (not the comedian).

[brandonkm]

I recommend checking out 'universal principles of design' and o'reillys 'designing web navigation'. These two will give you a good overview of different aspects of design while helping you understand how design works on the web. I think that in starting to learn about all of this, it would be advantageous to approach things from an 'information' angle. That is, web design is information first and aesthetics second.

Beyond that 'A Designer's Research Manual' is well worth reading.

And for colors check out http://www.colourlovers.com

[niels_olson → brandonkm]

> web design is information first and aesthetics second

Agreed, though bad aesthetics can/will destroy any value the user assigns to your information. Edward Tufte's books are good. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi. He also has some recommendations (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/bookreviews) and the works of others that he cites are usually also excellent.

The cheap version is to just read through the Ask ET forum on his site.

One that is harder to come across: Josef Albers "Interaction of Color": http://www.yalebooks.co.uk/yale/display.asp?isb=0300115954&#...

[brandonkm → niels_olson]

Have never heard of 'Interaction of Color'. I'll need to hunt that one down, thanks for the recommendation!