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Comment by awt | Hacker News Reader

A book I've found to be very useful for picking the absolute basics of graphic design (which applies to web design in many ways) is "The Non-Designer's Design Book."

It covers the basic principles of graphic design:

Proximity

Alignment

Repetition

Contrast

It also covers the basics of using color in design.

Universal Principles of Design is also a fascinating read.

I've found that reading these books, then trying to design something is helping. It helps if you've tried to design something before reading the books as well.

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I've always seen those 4 principles listed in the reverse order, you can form an easy to remember mnemonic.

Helped me a lot too.

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-...

There are a couple different titles, the one linked above is the typography-focussed volume.

The one on general design principles is here: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...

There are also volumes specifically for web, powerpoint, etc.

You're right of course, that's the one I meant. Copy paste bug! :(

For a design book that is an ugly cover.

You're right, this is often brought up.

But trust me, this book is one I'm very glad to have read. More importantly, glad to have read first. It's a list of no-nonsense principals which teach you the basics in an easy-to-understand manner. I really can't recommend this highly enough, cover or no.

Note that the book I linked to is the wrong one. One of the comments has the correct book.

Also note, this book doesn't talk about color, but only the other basics.

Steve Blank's "Four Steps to the Epiphany" also has a horrible design and the "manufacturing" quality of the book is just plain crappy. But the content in the book is just absolutely golden, a must read for tech startups.

yes - they just a lost a sale for me. The yellow and the purple tones are too close.

Yes the cover sucks, it sucks horribly, however, the book is by far the best book I have found for people new or intermediate to design.

This seems like a dichotomy but its not. The reason the cover sucks is that Williams is not naturally good at design. This means for her to get good at it she had to actually learn and understand it. This is why this book is so good. However, she never learned how to design with color. Most of the designs she makes using color I feel are bad.

That said this book ROCKS, is hands down the best book when it comes to design basics of: Proximity

Alignment

Repetition

Contrast

Typography

That's the publisher's house style, I'm pretty sure. Author's rarely have control over book covers or book titles--publishers think they know more about such marketing issues than authors do.

That sounds reasonable, but Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think is a design book that embodies its own principles, from cover to cover.

I found and read this book without having ever heard of it. It does a good job of laying out design principles in a way that analytic/hacker-type personalities can understand. Now I even find myself conscious of how the text in my emails are laid out.

A designer once told me that good design books have great covers. I can only think the other way around of this book.

You gave the principles in the wrong order. It should be Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity (CRAP). ;)

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