Top Ten Books for Web Designers and Developers
When you spend all day in front of a screen there’s nothing better than kicking back at the end of a busy day with a good book. While you might do most of your learning from a screen, there are so many titles out there that can help you evolve your skills as a web designer or developer. Below we’ve rounded up our top ten titles for web professionals to help inspire your next creative project, whether it’s based around graphic design, user experience, or back end functionality.
The User Experience Team of One by Leah Buley
£27.51
Buy item for only £27.51The User Experience Team of One prescribes a range of approaches that have big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables. Whether you want to cross over into user experience or you’re a seasoned practitioner trying to drag your organization forward, this book gives you tools and insight for doing more with less.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk
£18.75
Buy item for only £18.75We design to elicit responses from people. We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you’ll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play.
Clean Architecture by Robert C. Martin
£25.71
Buy item for only £25.71Building upon the success of best-sellers The Clean Coder and Clean Code, legendary software craftsman Robert C. “Uncle Bob” Martin shows how to bring greater professionalism and discipline to application architecture and design.
Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery by Jon Duckett
£30.87
Buy item for only £30.87A two–book set for web designers and front–end developers This two–book set combines the titles HTML & CSS: Designing and Building Web Sites and JavaScript & jQuery: Interactive Front–End Development . Together these two books form an ideal platform for anyone who wants to master HTML and CSS before stepping up to JavaScript and jQuery.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
£9.90
Buy item for only £9.90When Cal Newport coined the term ‘deep work’ on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve. Most of us, after all, are excruciatingly familiar with shallow work instead – distractedly skimming the surface of our workload and never getting to the important part. Newport began exploring the methods and mindset that foster a practice of distraction-free productivity at work, and now, in DEEP WORK, he shows how anyone can achieve this elusive state.
Don’t Make Me Think (Revisited) by Steven Krug
£22.79
Buy item for only £22.79Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, hundreds of thousands of Web designers and developers have relied on usability guru Steve Krug’s guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design. Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on the subject.
The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S. Skiena
£40.92
Buy item for only £40.92This newly expanded and updated second edition of the best-selling classic continues to take the “mystery” out of designing algorithms, and analysing their efficacy and efficiency. Expanding on the first edition, the book now serves as the primary textbook of choice for algorithm design courses while maintaining its status as the premier practical reference guide to algorithms for programmers, researchers, and students.
Design is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton
£14.95
Buy item for only £14.95Design is Storytelling is a guide to thinking and making created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design, and user experience. By grounding narrative concepts in fresh, concrete examples and demonstrations, this compelling book provides designers with tools and insights for shaping behaviour and engaging users. Compact, relevant and richly illustrated, the book is written with a sense of humour and a respect for the reader’s time and intelligence.
Code by Charles Petzold
£14.49
Buy item for only £14.49What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries.
Using everyday objects and familiar language systems such as Braille and Morse code, author Charles Petzold weaves an illuminating narrative for anyone who’s ever wondered about the secret inner life of computers and other smart machines.
Theory of Type Design by Gerard Unger
£39.50
Buy item for only £39.50This volume consists of 24 concise chapters, each clearly describing a different aspect of type design (from practical considerations like spacing and rhythm, legibility, size and italics to more ineffable considerations like personality and preference). This theoretical material is illuminated by more than 200 illustrations and practical examples, and an extensive glossary succinctly explains terminology and key ideas.
Internationally oriented, and taking into consideration the past, present and future of typography, Theory of Type Design will be an indispensable resource for graphic design students, professionals, and those with a general interest in text and printed matter.
