20 Useful Web Design Books Worthy of Your Collection

April 6th, 2008 by Jacob Gube | 13 Comments | Stumble It! del.icio.us

If you’re in search of books on the topic of web design to expand or start up your book collection, here’s 20 web design books worth considering.

All books are linked to their Google Book Search page so you can see previews, reviews, and other related works associated with it.

1) Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design with XHTML, CSS, and DOM

Web Standards Creativity features innovative examples of beautiful and feature-rich web designs that are fully web standards compliant and includes entries by some of the world’s top web designers.

2) Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design

Designing the Obvious offers pragmatic solutions and ideas for developing web application designs to make the users’ experience more effortless and less unproblematic.

3) Designing With Web Standards

Written by the highly-accomplished designer and editor in chief of A List Apart, Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards covers intermediate to advanced techniques to help you create designs that comply with current web standards.

4) Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Don’t Make Me Think! is a very popular web usability book that covers viable techniques and concepts that you can apply to a winning web design.

5) Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience

An ineffective navigation scheme can confuse viewers and reduce the likelihood that they’ll navigate outside of the landing page. Designing Web Navigation is an in-depth book on the topic of web navigation.

6) Bulletproof Web Design

Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm talks about creating designs that cater to a large variety of situations. With websites being viewed in non-traditional ways (such as mobile devices), it’s imperative to develop accessible designs.

7) Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns

Written by the world-renowned author Michael Bowers, Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns talks about advanced CSS/HTML models and formulas. Expect to read about browser box model differences, explanation of the different doctypes, and much more.

8) The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web

Authors Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag discuss key design ideas for creating a visually-appealing web design. The book features designs from css Zen Garden and is a great read for anyone looking to be inspired.

9) Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites

Using the work of premier talented designers in its dialogue, Adapting to Web Standards discusses the application of standards-compliant designs and code that can be adopted into high-traffic websites.

10) Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow That Works

Web redesign 2.0 offers methods for web redesign workflow management. It discusses logistical constraints and how to effectively analyze feature requirements to reach the company’s goals.

11) The Design of Sites: Patterns For Creating Winning Web Sites

The Design of Sites is a very thorough and sensible book on the topic of customer-centered designs. It discusses formulas that lead to powerful web designs.

12) Web Design: Studios 2

Web Design: Studios 2 is a collection of some of the best web designs. If you’re looking for a book to inspire you on your own projects, check this one out.

13) Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance

Many projects require compliance to section 508 (especially true for government work and accessible websites). Web Accessibility shares vital information on the subject of accessibility on the web.

14) CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions

CSS Mastery is about modern CSS best practices and solutions. Two hypothetical websites are included at the end to hammer down concepts covered throughout the book.

15) HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible

Most of the books featured here aren’t comprehensive reference books, but it’s a good idea to own one that’s complete and easily-searchable. If you’re interested in purchasing one, have a look at HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible.

16) CSS Cookbook

This book is 500+ pages of professional-grade CSS design patterns. CSS Cookbook covers all elements of a web page (including navigation, page layout, and typography) and is appropriate for intermediate to advanced CSS developers.

17) The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design

The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design is geared for beginning to intermediate web designers, or designers wanting to catch up on modern design patterns and standards-compliant coding.

18) Advanced Professional Web Design: Techniques & Templates

Advanced Professional Web Design uses a "teaching by showing" methodology. The book is accompanied by loads of customizable designs that you can use to jump start your learning.

19) Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design

Targeted for web designers who want to improve their understanding of CSS, Transcending CSS provides visual examples and talks about design workflow.

20) Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning

Designing websites involves more than just the design itself, it’s also about managing and presenting information to the client. Communicating Design offers tips on presenting designs and developing usability tests, amongst other things.

13 Comments

Zack

April 6th, 2008

Wow, great list! I’ve got a little light reading ahead of me now ;)

I can also absolutely recommend, “Prioritizing Web Usability” by Jacob Nielsen. It’s an updated and expanded version of his 2000 “Designing Web Usability”.

Jacob Gube

April 6th, 2008

@Zack: I’ve read and re-read “Prioritizing Web Usability“, I agree that it’s an excellent and ground-breaking book.

I’m a big fan of Dr. Nielsen (as I’ve confessed in my article, “20 Websites That Made Me A Better Web Developer), but I felt that I already had too many “web usability” books featured here.

For those interested, I do highly recommend checking out both books that Zack mentioned.

Here’s the link to the Google Book Search entries:

Brian Moschel

April 7th, 2008

This post made me realize how badly I need to read a CSS book. While learning CSS by experimentation, Googling, and necessity are great, books are usually a better method for learning things.

On the topic of web books, the only programming book I’ve ever actually enjoyed was the O’Reilly JavaScript guide:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/jscript4/

That’s a good standard on technical writing that somehow doesn’t bore readers to tears.