Another web design site, another page that's almost impossible to read due to washed out text.<p>Guys, do you test your sites on anything other than Macs with "retina" displays? For example, I maxed out the brightness setting on my Thinkpad x60 and the text is still barely legible. Granted, this TP has a very average display, but do you really want to limit your audience to Mac users?
The Design of Everyday Things literally changed my life back when I read it in high school. To this day, I've never been able to look at doors the same way.<p>But seriously, everything I see nowadays that frustrates me in its design immediately harkens back to a principle in The Design of Everyday Things.<p>Truly transformative book - couldn't recommend it enough.
Great books, but why is it necessary that <i>every</i> hacker should read them?<p>How are these relevant to the hacker who writes his own Linux device drivers? Or the hacker building an open source voice recognition library?<p>There are plenty of hackers who do amazing work that has nothing to do with visual design.
I found the Non Designers Design Book by Robin Williams irreplaceable. It really improved my understanding and skill. Instead of mediocre and bad designs, I can now create stuff that passes the bar. The most important thing it teaches you, is how to detect what is bad with some design and what to do to fix it.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Williams/dp/0321193857/ref=dp_ob_title_bk" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...</a>
I keep returning to the moment when I set up an email forwarding in IFTTT for every mentioning of word 'book' on HN feed - boy does it deliver some good links.
This is a great list.<p>From a pure graphic design standpoint, I would recommend The Elements of Typography Style to any developer, as well as Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. A solid understanding of typography is maybe the most important, and definitely the most immediately useful, facet of design.<p>Interesting point about Muller-Brockmann as well. It's essentially a collection of case studies about working within constraints.
I don't want to seem snarky, but that first picture you have there, the one of a collection of books where I have to tilt my head to read them and that book on the left is called "Design of Everyday Things" and talks about designing things so that ... for instance... people don't have to tilt their heads to read them.<p>Why don't you rotate that picture, 90 degrees counter-clockwise?
It seems a week doesn't get by without a post or two in Hacker News about GUI design or graphic design, often entitled something like "Design for Hackers" or "Design for Developers".<p>The trouble with all these posts is that they are trying to shortcut the methodology of design by various hacks, even something as lengthy as read 5 books is by-in-large a hack.<p>There is no substitute for practise, for looking and appreciating your world in a different way (this can be self-taught, I will discuss more below) and for in-depth thinking about what either comes down to communication or feedback problems.<p>Aesthetics largely is difficult to teach and learn and comes from confidence and a place in the brain that is hard to hack, but communication and interaction is learnt from early childhood by everyone - it just needs opening up and awareness of this as we mature.<p>By looking at the Design of Everyday Things (the book or the things around you) you begin to appreciate or notice the failures in signs, handles, buttons, phones, car controls, packaging and if you are tuned into this way of thinking it can be hard to stop considering the amount of interactions with “things” we have everyday.<p>Then taking this body of knowledge that is learnt one can then start objectively looking at one's own design and interaction problems, using the same tools that you have been using to analyse potential problems as they occur and working them out to find the best solution. But knowledge of the best solution will also come from practise of working with the constraints of whatever medium are working in (for example print, application, touch screen, architecture or furniture design).<p>This practise will mean mistakes - this is an important part of the learning process, just as it was when growing up, you will learn what works and doesn't work and in the future intuitively work with this in mind.
As a designer I can recommend each of these books.<p>I'm seeing in various comments that 'hackers' and 'designers' are two different things, and that a 'hacker' needs a certain type of book or format to the material. I'd submit that most hackers have a thirst for knowledge, part from curiosity and part from a desire to be self sufficient in making their concepts a reality. Digest knowledge, practice the technique until it works and you've realized your goal? Does this not encapsulate the 'hacker spirit'? It's funny because most great designers I know came from the same perspective...<p>So I say put aside this idea of Hacker vs. Designer and who needs what. A design is a solution to a problem, visual design language/concepts are another tool set to help you make effective software and so much more. Don't treat it like its some sort of voodoo that only left-brainers can comprehend.
All these books are great but they are theoretical in their approach. It's good to be knowledgeable about Golden Ration or Fitts Law but it wouldn't be of immediate help on your next project. The books for Hackers should be pragmatic in their approach and not very theoretical.<p>The books I recommend are:
Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams. It focuses on topics like Consistency, Alignment, Proximity, and Contrast. With these four rules, you can make 90% of your designs look good. It also explains briefly on what colors and typography to use. When you've firm grasp of the fundamentals, it would make sense to arm yourself with more theory.<p>Don't make me Think by Steve Krug. It teaches you to simplify and focus on the end-user.
Good books, but not particularly good for hackers. I have the "The Elements of Typography Style" for example, it is certainly a classic, but it is written for people already familiar with typography to some extent, is very long and most of it isn't very relevant to web design.<p>A good design book for hackers, would have less than 200 pages and deal with the essentials, basic typography, using whitespace productively, grids, color theory etc. in a systematic way. If anyone has any recommendations for that kind of book, I would love to hear them.
I've long wanted a good book that covers design principles in a way similar to how one would introduce a student to calculus, but for graphical design, layout and their interplay with typography.<p>Most books I've found so far are merely coffee table books: Pages of very nice illustrations, but weak on explaining the theory and principles of applying it to, e.g., a book, poster or website.<p>Does anybody know of such books? What do serious students of graphic design read? Is the book "Universal principles of design" a good fit?
I would also recommend "Designing with the Mind in mind" by Jeff Johnson.<p>Less generic that what has been listed in this article since it focuses more on user interfaces, it's a great overview of basic design principles, with clever illustrated examples.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-Interface/dp/012375030X" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-In...</a>
This isn't about programming related design, but "A Pattern Language" is a classic, with architectural and urban design principles that apply in many other domains:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language</a>
Another great one: Frank Chimero's "The Shape of Design". More about the design process than design itself, and that makes it all the more applicable to anyone who creates anything at all.<p><a href="http://www.shapeofdesignbook.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.shapeofdesignbook.com</a>
I would definitely add "Nudge" by Thaler & Sunstein to the list. It really helps understand how people choices are motivated, thus how to make good design choices.
This is awesome too: <a href="http://hackdesign.org" rel="nofollow">http://hackdesign.org</a>
"Design lessons for programmers, curated by top designers".
the one book these lists always forget: "Understanding Comics" <a href="http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/index.html</a><p>in my opinion, it's at par with "don't make me think". i recommend reading them both at once.
The only necessary book on design, at only 46 pages, is "Notes on Graphic Design And Visual Communication."<p>I have met AIGA award designers and Internet design celebrities who don't know some of the basics laid out in this short book.<p>It's probably the only <i>handwritten</i> book you'll ever read.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Crisp-Graphic-Design-Visual-Communication/dp/1560520442" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Crisp-Graphic-Design-Visual-Communicat...</a>