Product Description

With Robin Williams' guiding hand, non-professionals, artists, and designers alike have learned the principles behind elegant design. Now that much of this same audience is working on the Web, Robin has focused her attention on the specific needs of this medium with Robin Williams Web Design Workshop. John Tollett and Dave Rohr pitch in with their illustration and graphics experience to create a handsome and engaging instructional book. The ideas in this book tackle all aspects of Web design theory, including all the ways that color, fonts, clip art, photographs and so on contribute to creating a visual impression. Then the book takes the user through site planning and layout, navigability, and functionality, all in Robin Williams' clear and accessible style.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #260731 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Because "There's more to Web design than Photoshop and HTML" Robin Williams Web Design Workshop covers everything for the working Web designer including "how to survive dealing with clients".

Although Dreamweaver, GoLive, Photoshop, and other applications are mentioned (Flash even gets its own chapter), the book covers the gamut of Web design and technology issues rather than focusing on an individual application.

Each chapter is divided into sections, often no more than a couple of pages long. The chapter on Backgrounds, the area of a Web page that seems to attract the worst design crimes, shows you how to avoid "the heartbreak of bad background design" in no less than eight sections.

In many books this subject would be lucky to get eight paragraphs, Robin Williams Web Design Workshop uses a clear two-column layout and plenty of real-life example screenshots to get the message across. Some pages consist only of captioned screenshots providing a great source of visual ideas.

There's a good balance between purely design-related issues and the technical stuff. Subjects like search engines, embedded fonts, DHTML and forms are given a thorough overview highlighting the main issues, and links to sources of more in-depth information are often to be found at the end of the chapter.

If see yourself more as a designer than a programmer, but want a working knowledge of current Web technologies from a book that you can read away from your computer, this is it. --Ken McMahon

From the Back Cover

Robin Williams has taught millions what makes for good design and why, never forgetting that most of us don't speak jargon--and she does it all with a disarming sense of humor. Now Robin, with coauthors John Tollett and Dave Rohr, translates the principles of creative, effective design to the Web in Robin Williams Web Design Workshop.

Learn from these pros everything you need to know about Web design, including the ways that color, fonts, clip art, photographs, and layout can work together to create the visual impression you want. Robin doesn't just tell you about good Web design, she shows you, walking you through every step of the design process, from site planning and layout to navigation design and functionality--the book is illustrated with hundreds of full-color examples. Like Robin herself, Robin Williams Web Design Workshop strikes the perfect teaching balance, combining theory and real-world experience, all wrapped up in a colorful, engaging package.

About the Author

Robin Williams is the author of piles of best-selling and award-winning books, all by Peachpit Press, including The Non-DesignerÕs Design Book, The Little Mac Book, The Non-DesignerÕs Web Book, and many more. Robin has been teaching college-level graphic design for fourteen years.

Customer Reviews

1st Class web DESIGN book
This book ranks as one of my all-time best technical books! Its wonderfully well presented - plenty of illustrations and photos, and is written in a jargon free manner (infact its almost like a novel!)

The book covers all the DESIGN aspects of creating web sites and gives plenty of insight into HOW to build them. If you are a techie-head and want to know all the coding tricks, then forget it - this ISNT the book for you. If you have any kind of flair for design or even just an appreciation of what makes a GOOD web site AND you can handle technological explanations (not heavy code!!), then this IS the book for you.

Its glossy, its easy to read and packed with examples. If you want to know what makes a GOOD web site then you MUST buy this book.

PS. Another good choice is "Web Design, Tools and Techniques" by Peter Kentie. It however is a bit more 'application' oriented and less 'design-y'

Excellent! Buy it!
Robin's book must rank as one of the best I have ever read on web site design. It is beautifully presented and written with humour. I have been designing web sites for the last four years, entirely self taught and thought I was doing pretty well until I read this book! I have learnt more from reading this book cover to cover in the last 48 hours (I couldn't put it down), than through my previous laborious and amateurish efforts!

One of the best sections for me personally, were the Chapters on dealing with clients and using freelance services to assist with some of the more techie stuff. I have been attempting to do all this myself, mistakenly assuming that as an aspiring web site designer, I should be able to write all the various programming languages!

My one and only critisism is the last chapter, which is a virtual chapter and put on the web. The purpose of this is to enable the reader to actually view all the animated effects, flash, etc. Only having a 56K modem with no immediate hope of broadband for a while yet, I would have preferred this to have been included on CD with the book. However, this is a minor gripe and I fully appreciate the reasoning behind the author's decision.

Overall the book, has given me the confidence and know how to design and produce web sites with more professionalism, both aesthetically and from a business perpective. I have now purchased a second copy to give to my daughter who is just beginning a Dreamweaver course......

Brilliant book, lots of helpful hints and tips...
I'd never heard of Robin Williams before being given this book as a gift. I now want to read ALL her books! It's very down to earth and though there is quite a bit of technical stuff in there, it never talks down to you. There are lots of illustrations and is written with a sense of humour. I would recommend this book as a good place to start for anyone wishing to know more about web design! The book is good value and there is also an accompanying website with LOTS more information... Excellent stuff.