Product Description

If you think web design is beyond your reach, or if you want your existing web site to look more professional, this thoroughly updated classic is the place to turn! In these pages, best-selling authors Robin Williams and John Tollett share the creative ideas, useful techniques, and basic design principles that are essential to great Web design-all in the context of the most current technology, software, and standards. Throughout, the authors' aim is to inspire you and spark your creativity rather than sedate you with pages and pages of code. To that end, you'll find loads of real-world examples, interesting illustrations, and the simple instructions you need to implement the techniques and concepts described in these pages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78090 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
While The Non-Designer's Web Book won't answer all your technical questions about the inner workings of the Web, it explains most of what a beginning designer needs to know: what the Web is, how it gets to your computer, how to use it, and most of all how to design for it.

Any artist can tell you that you have to know how a medium works to get the most impact working in it. A basic understanding of how the Web works enables the good designer to create sites with the most effect. This book thoroughly discusses the different kinds of graphics used on the Web, when to use one over another, how to make the most of text styles, and how to design navigation systems.

The comparisons are the best stuff here--good design vs. bad design, why designing Web pages and printed pages is different, and why a site looks terrific on one monitor but terrible on another one. Two chapters on properly preparing graphics and setting typography for Web site use describe how to avoid obvious mistakes that would make your work look amateurish.

Not limited to design, Non-Designer shows you how to get a site up and running, register the domain name, and add it to search engines. After the design is finished and implemented, the site has to be uploaded and updated, and that's explained too.

If there is one fault with this book, it's the lack of information on specific authoring tools. The barest overview of the current crop of tools appears in chapter 3, "Just What Are Web Pages, Anyway?" but a discussion of why you should choose one package over another is absent.

Don't let that stop you from buying this book, though. Plenty of magazines regularly have Web authoring tool "shootouts." What the magazines don't tell you, and what Non-Designer excels at, is how to make well-designed pages. If you're going to build Web sites, for either personal or professional use, but you have no clue where to begin, start with this book. It's easy to read, it's devoid of confusing jargon, and it's full of do's and don'ts to help you avoid common snags. --Mike Caputo

From the Back Cover

If you think web design is beyond your reach, or if you want your existing web site to look more professional, this thoroughly updated classic is the place to turn! In these pages, best-selling authors Robin Williams and John Tollett share the creative ideas, useful techniques, and basic design principles that are essential to great Web design-all in the context of the most current technology, software, and standards. Throughout, the authors' aim is to inspire you and spark your creativity rather than sedate you with pages and pages of code. To that end, you'll find loads of real-world examples, interesting illustrations, and the simple instructions you need to implement the techniques and concepts described in these pages.

About the Author

Robin Williams has written dozens of best-selling and award-winning books, including The Little Mac Book, The Little Mac iApps Book, The Non-Designer's Design Book, Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, and many more. John Tollett is a graphic designer, art director, and illustrator. He is the coauthor of numerous books with Robin, including The Little iBook Book the two editions of The Non-Designer's Web Book, and Robin Williams Web Design Workshop.

Customer Reviews

A great book for beginners; good for advanced webheads.
Just like the title says, if you have little or no design experience/training, this is a great book to have. But even if you have been designing web sites for a while like me (3 years), there are plenty of things you might find useful.

The book is full-color. Much of it assumes you know little about computers, HTML, and the Internet. It also assumes you are using one of the popular HTML editors and graphics programs like Frontpage and Photoshop. Even with these liabilities, there are wonderful principles, tips and techniques provided by the authors that should benefit even experienced designers.

For me, the meat of the book was the middle where it describes the basics of design, color, layout, and typography. The advanced tips and tricks chapter also offered some tidbits I hadn't thought of before. However, I breezed through the beginning and ending chapters (on the Internet, web pages, site organization, uploading your site, and testing it) because they had little to offer I didn't already know. But for a beginner this may be valuable information.

One reason I wanted this book was all of its beautiful and creative design examples. If I am stumped on how to design something, I will pick up this book and see if it may inspire me. The authors didn't provide "cutting edge" type graphics, but examples that are simple, colorful and effective.

This book should be made compulsary reading
Read the title - "The Non-designer's Web Book". This is who it is for. I am a web designer and I read this book a couple of years ago. Yes it can be a little patronising and yes it can be a little too basic at times but it outlines the basics of design (not specifically web design) that sadly alot of designers don't seem to be interested in these days.

I came onto Amazon to buy this book for one of my new designers. I am buying it for him because although I can train him to use Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop, it is almost impossible to teach someone what actually LOOKS good.

There are basic rules in this book that must be adhered to when creating a website and if my designer only learns 1 or 2 things from this book, then I am happy - it will have served it's purpose.

Please do not overlook this book as a real "beginners" book, I think every single web designer could do with a reminder of the basics every now and again. If you don't beleive me, just look at some of the appalling sites on the internet at the moment - and yes there are quite a few cr@p ones out there!

A MUST FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO BE A REALLY GREAT DESIGNER.

A good all-round guide of web designing,easy to understand.
The language is plain and simple to understand. The chapters are fun and have a lot of useful information for beginners designing their web site.

The examples of good and bad design demonstrate visually the ideas and thoughts of the authors. The most useful bits for me personally were the chapter graphics formats and the added advice for quick ways of working with images. While more experienced designers may feel it is a little too simple for their needs, newcomers to web design and people looking to design their first site for home use or for small businesses should find that the book is a useful guide for page layout and design principles.