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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 Getting Started, Research, Typography, Colour, and Layout. Learn solid graphic design theory that you can simply apply to your designs, making the difference from a good design to a great one.
254 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
21 people are currently reading
541 people want to read
About the author
Mark Boulton
13 books6 followersMark Boulton is a web designer and author. He is the head of his own studio, Mark Boulton Design, where they try to make useful beautiful things for clients around the world. Sometimes outspoken, always passionate, Mark started out designing web sites when he was the 'young guy' in the studio back in 1997. He's been banging on about applying the fundamentals of good graphic design on the web ever since, much to the dismay of his family, friends and colleagues. Mark lives in South Wales with his wife and daughter, a small collection of neglected bonsai and a guitar he wish he owned when he was 18.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 10, 2012
This book purports to teach basic graphic design foundations, but it includes lots of commentary aimed at graphic design students (including advice on starting one's own freelance design business), readers who would already have plenty of instruction in typography, layout, color, et cetera. For them, a book teaching those foundations is redundant.
Meanwhile, non-graphic-designer readers can't make sense of Boulton's information, because it's all so cursory, vague, and/or unclearly written that it's impossible to understand. Some examples:
* He proposes a hierarchy of type variants (bold, italic, small caps, et cetera), with advice on how to choose variants that won't clash, but then his written explanation doesn't match up with the example diagram.
* He points out that en-dashes can be used to join compound adjectives, but he failed to actually use en-dashes in his example. His written explanation is no help, because it doesn't tell you whether en-dashes go within or between the compound words. If you can figure it out from this sentence, then either you already knew about this or you're telepathic:
* While explaining how to handle ellipses, punctuation, and quotation marks that appear alongside each other, his examples don't match his written explanations. In the same section, he has two adjacent sentences that use the phrase "full stop" to mean different things: first a period (.), then a space ( ).
* He introduces the reader to RGB versus CMYK color models, and then starts talking about color wheels without explaining whether and how those models apply, or even what model he's using.
* For presenting color palettes, Boulton recommends, "For smaller palettes and combinations, I use the rectangle containing a line and a square." What rectangle, line, or square he's talking about, I have no idea — the surrounding paragraph offers no clues.
Despite Boulton's explicit assertion to the contrary, A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web feels like a compilation of his blog posts with little depth or cohesion. It certainly didn't get much editing attention during the transformation. Besides the impenetrable writing, it's full of errors that should have been caught in proofreading, including repeated use of "comprise" when he meant "compose" (hint to all writers: the phrase "comprised of" is automatically wrong) and a misspelling of "opulence" as "oppulance". At best, this book serves as a list of things to think about, but there are other books that do this better and actually teach you things along the way, The Non-Designer's Design Book being my favorite example.
I became more and more annoyed as I read, and then at the very end Boulton closes with:
Something was missed alright.
Meanwhile, non-graphic-designer readers can't make sense of Boulton's information, because it's all so cursory, vague, and/or unclearly written that it's impossible to understand. Some examples:
* He proposes a hierarchy of type variants (bold, italic, small caps, et cetera), with advice on how to choose variants that won't clash, but then his written explanation doesn't match up with the example diagram.
* He points out that en-dashes can be used to join compound adjectives, but he failed to actually use en-dashes in his example. His written explanation is no help, because it doesn't tell you whether en-dashes go within or between the compound words. If you can figure it out from this sentence, then either you already knew about this or you're telepathic:
The en dash can also be used to join compound adjectives that include multiple words or hyphens already. In this case, the en dash clarifies what is grouped with what, for example, high-priority-high-pressure tasks. [sic]
* While explaining how to handle ellipses, punctuation, and quotation marks that appear alongside each other, his examples don't match his written explanations. In the same section, he has two adjacent sentences that use the phrase "full stop" to mean different things: first a period (.), then a space ( ).
* He introduces the reader to RGB versus CMYK color models, and then starts talking about color wheels without explaining whether and how those models apply, or even what model he's using.
* For presenting color palettes, Boulton recommends, "For smaller palettes and combinations, I use the rectangle containing a line and a square." What rectangle, line, or square he's talking about, I have no idea — the surrounding paragraph offers no clues.
Despite Boulton's explicit assertion to the contrary, A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web feels like a compilation of his blog posts with little depth or cohesion. It certainly didn't get much editing attention during the transformation. Besides the impenetrable writing, it's full of errors that should have been caught in proofreading, including repeated use of "comprise" when he meant "compose" (hint to all writers: the phrase "comprised of" is automatically wrong) and a misspelling of "opulence" as "oppulance". At best, this book serves as a list of things to think about, but there are other books that do this better and actually teach you things along the way, The Non-Designer's Design Book being my favorite example.
I became more and more annoyed as I read, and then at the very end Boulton closes with:
Now, why not go back to the beginning and read it again. You may have missed something.
Something was missed alright.
August 10, 2012
I really liked this book!
It went further into Typography, Grid Systems, and Color than some other Web Design books have.
There was one section on tools which I think should have been left out. The tools they mentioned were already outdated and the book is 3 years old. The author mentions at the end that the book was not meant to be a snapshot of the web design industry right now. When including these tools it felt like that is what he was doing.
Overall an awesome book! Definitely got me more into Typography, Colors, and grid systems.
A good focus on the well formed principles that were formed from print.
-- After discussing this book with some other people --
I think this book is a good overview for someone who is getting started with design and does not have an art background. This book will help you to figure out what you need to know to learn more about designing. It will give you a little intro into the topics to get started but you will have to search out other books to go deeper into detail with those topics.
It went further into Typography, Grid Systems, and Color than some other Web Design books have.
There was one section on tools which I think should have been left out. The tools they mentioned were already outdated and the book is 3 years old. The author mentions at the end that the book was not meant to be a snapshot of the web design industry right now. When including these tools it felt like that is what he was doing.
Overall an awesome book! Definitely got me more into Typography, Colors, and grid systems.
A good focus on the well formed principles that were formed from print.
-- After discussing this book with some other people --
I think this book is a good overview for someone who is getting started with design and does not have an art background. This book will help you to figure out what you need to know to learn more about designing. It will give you a little intro into the topics to get started but you will have to search out other books to go deeper into detail with those topics.
August 23, 2011
Far from teaching you all the things you need regarding to web design, which is impossible,it could open up the eyes for those who can't see hidden things;unseen things that are covered with that glass we can bypass with little effort, like a fog in a fresh mountain; in other words sometimes it looks harder than we think to realize things around us but there's some guidance we can take advantage of to ease this process. That's the moment when a book like "Designing for the web" comes in handy. pretty straight-foward, with real-life-experience examples, both in printing design and graphic in general applied to the web; tips, advises, recommedations, suggestions and a purely and simple manner, easy to digest easy to comprenhend.
worth the reading ;
worth the reading ;
January 9, 2018
Good little read. Not a lot of deep insights but definitely useful. Many of the tools are certainly too old but some of the ideas are still applicable to web design today.
October 18, 2023
I missed the focus on web in this book, it was mostly focused on design itself. Either way- a quick refresher for a designer
May 16, 2014
This is goodly, if you are non-designer, trying to understand how to take print, graphic design, and photography principles and apply them on the web. If you haven't formally studied colour theory and typography then this is pretty useful.
Also covers making the move from in company to freelance web design. Has some useful digital project governance ideas in the same vein as Kelly Goto's seminal work 'Web Redesign 2.0 | Workflow that Works' on that topic.
It covers off the grid layout pretty well and explains the principles of layout well. If you find yourself looking at white space, alignment, and spacing of text and want more than (or justification) of your gut feel method this may be of use
Also covers making the move from in company to freelance web design. Has some useful digital project governance ideas in the same vein as Kelly Goto's seminal work 'Web Redesign 2.0 | Workflow that Works' on that topic.
It covers off the grid layout pretty well and explains the principles of layout well. If you find yourself looking at white space, alignment, and spacing of text and want more than (or justification) of your gut feel method this may be of use
June 12, 2012
Per quanto il titolo e l'approccio siano pratici, A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web è un vero e proprio manuale sulla teoria della progettazione grafica che qualsiasi web designer dovrebbe leggere prima ancora di pensare di realizzare un sito. Mark Boulton, protagonista tra le tante altre cose della riprogettazione di un sito come quello della comunità di Drupal, spiega tipografia, colore e impaginazione con la consapevolezza di un designer che ha attraversato la transizione dalla stampa al web diventando anche, inevitabilmente, uno sviluppatore.
December 15, 2012
A good and concise step into the web design. The intention to go deep into the basics of graphic theory is very welcoming and make this book a good reference to check and share with web enthusiasts. I'd like a bit more info on layout techniques but maybe in other book.
December 11, 2013
This book is timeless.
Although written five years ago, the theory remains useful in the modern day web. It opens my mind to the broad aspect of web design, and encourages me to learn more and practice more. :)
Although written five years ago, the theory remains useful in the modern day web. It opens my mind to the broad aspect of web design, and encourages me to learn more and practice more. :)
February 26, 2009
An excellent overview of everything involved with the field of Web Design. Even for professionals, there is bound to be something in the book to teach everyone something.
December 21, 2009
Good primer/refresher on visual design fundamentals as applied to the web. Agency-focused - not as much for innies. Could use a second edition to fill in a few gaps, but overall, a worthy read.
February 26, 2011
Bueno, es un inicio por el camino correcto del diseño web, pero en ocasiones me parece que se queda corto de lo que podría ser y se limita mucho a la opinión un tanto tópica del autor.
March 21, 2014
This book was beautifully designed, but was made for a developer not a designer. Most of the tips a designer should already know.
June 8, 2015
Not bad, clear and simple, had some good ideas and methods to follow.
December 17, 2015
It's a perfect book to make the first steps in web design !
September 13, 2016
Have some very useful information, but more for those who are new to design elements. I expected a more thorough guide that leads from generating ideas, building wireframe, to website designing.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews