The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

Any software developer creating applications for the desktop requires some artistic skills to not only make the technical part of the application work but also to make it look nice and neat. Granted, this is probably more valid for a small company than one of the bigger ones which can afford the luxury of having different people for the design and the implementation. Unfortunately, mine does not thus, I usually have to do both.

Even though I tend to believe that I am somewhat capable of designing user interfaces that convey the information in a clear, consise yet nice looking way, I would not really call myself an artist or designer. Thus, when I decided to take on creating a web site, I started looking around the bookshelf. Jason Beaird's "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" was one of the first books that I found. Jason, a full-time web site designer, promises to provide an easy step-by-step guide to successfully creating stunning web sites.

The book itself is divided into five different chapters, each covering one aspect of the overall design process: Layout and Composition, Color, Texture, Typography and Imagery. Each chapter is illustrated with many outlines, example web sites as well as images to convey the particular information discussed. In addition, the layout for a sample web site is developed throughout the book.

While the book is easy to read through on a Saturday afternoon (and the easy-to-read writing style certainly helps with that), the sheer amount of information provided can be a little bit daunting. Jason pretty much touches every aspect of design theory, explaining it without going to much into the details and supporting it with a corresponding image or web site to see these theories applied. Throughout the process, you will quickly realize that web site design is really about applying a defined set of common principles found everywhere else in our daily life. It is actually surprising how you are able to see these patterns in visually rich web sites once you understood them.

Overall, the book is a solid entrance into the design theory and process for programmers and developers. After reading through the book, you realize how many different aspects you actually need to consider while designing a web site. If you are starting to develop web sites, you most likely will not (and probably should not) try to implement every single theory to its highest level. Nonetheless, some of the basic rules already get you started in your quest to create visually appealing web sites. As with many things...the rest comes with experience and certainly this book acts as a great reference along the way as well.